D#12, HW#3 - Writing Project Reflection

I have always enjoyed writing and I don’t need a reason to do it. Having a purpose for writing though makes the result seem more significant. My favorite step in bettering my skills for writing project number three was outlining. I love to organize things and combining this technique with writing was a good experience for me. The Toulmin method of outlining is a new technique that I will continue to use in my future writings. I was able to keep focused on my subject and progress through numerous homework assignments to narrow my topic, audience, and sub-points.

If I were able to complete this project again, I would do so many things differently. The first would definitely be selecting a topic that I really knew, versus something I thought I knew. The second would be to outline what I did know extensively. This is where I think I first ran into trouble. I didn’t do a complete outline in the beginning, thinking I knew my subject well enough that I’d just need to research what I didn’t know. How I was very wrong! Research has always been a struggle for me as I was never good at performing it. Until several people close to me, family and friends reminded me what I actually do on a day-to-day basis. After realizing what skills I already had (and this came late in the semester) finally I was able to concentrate more on the focus of the work instead of trying to learn thoroughly the researching process itself.

Learning the various steps to developing a cohesive and logical research paper, such as setting up a research proposal, tracking numerous sources through annotated bibliographies and outlining the argument, I have learned new techniques that will enhance skills I already possess. Of course, there’s always the ‘human error’ aspect to consider. As I look back through my writing projects, I realized I wasted a lot of time trying to perfect my research capabilities instead of focusing on the skills I needed to improve to conduct the research. I thought I knew what I was doing when it came to writing, and felt I needed to learn how to do research. I should have stressed this to the professor at the onset of the class, instead of trying to do what I felt I needed to do. I side tracked myself and now feel I have not lived up to my potential with the outcomes of this class.

Having said this, I have learned some writing techniques and skills, just not as many as I could have if my attention had been focused where it should have been. The proudest moment for me, which was also my biggest concern, is with the review of Turnitin.com my submitted paperwork were my thoughts and words mingled with a slight fraction from others. I will still need to be aware of this danger in my future writings as to not become lax or comforted in the fact I did so well in this area. My other concern is that I didn’t have enough time to let the lessons ‘sink’ in. I was constantly playing ‘catch up’ which left me grazing through assignments and not really ‘obtaining’ the knowledge.

I know I have met several course outcomes, but feel I never reached certain other ones. These are the ones I will be continuing to improve over time, while still nurturing the ones I have achieved through this course. I will specify where I met and possibly failed at these outcomes in a later posting. The last thing I’d like to mention at this juncture is that I was not pleased with the feedback or lack of during this course. There are many things that contributed to this fact and I do not wish to offend or upset anyone, so I will leave it at that.

My own personal writing strengths are the ability to spell words extremely well and have others who rely on me to do so. I am able to analyze my own work and feel comfortable with knowing I am not perfect. I organized the way I wanted to accomplish things and successfully completed things with that organization. Granted, I was late on several deadlines, however, using the organization I outlined myself with, I was able to none-the-less complete all my assignments. Future goals will be to focus on sentence structuring and varying the words I choose to use when reflecting my thoughts to others. Overall, I gained bits and pieces here and there and will continue to grow. I could not ask for any better outcome than that…