Reflection on Project 1

Reflection on Project 1

In this blog post, I am going to discuss and reflect on my QRG. I am going to cover the challenges, successes, effective and not effective strategies, similarities and differences to past projects, and how I can apply this project to other coursework. The picture further below is a picture of a girl looking at her reflection in the mirror. I thought it was a pun to have a reflection in a mirror to represent my reflection on my project.

What challenges did you face during the Quick Reference Guide project and how did you deal with them?

 It was challenging for me to figure out how to write without writing exactly like an essay nor an editorial. I felt like QRG's are somewhere in between because there is usually a little biased toward the authors perspective on the controversy. In order to solve this, I tried to write in essay form, but I added more point-of-view by reinstating the opinions of the people that said the quotations. I also found sources that sided more with healthy school lunches being necessary for healthy children.

In addition, it was challenging for me to determine the sources that did not need to incorporate because I felt like they all would help better my QRG. However, I was able to overcome this difficulty as I was writing because I realized some of the sources had ideas that did not fully suit the direction my QRG was going in.

What successes did you experience on the project and how did they happen?

I felt successful in giving every perspective on the healthy school lunch controversy because I know it is easy to be very biased. I wanted to voice my opinion more toward being for the healthier school lunches, so I added more sources and explanations to those. However, I did have sources that opposed the program, but I think they made for a better QRG; it gave the other perspective without saying that I agreed with it. 

Furthermore, I was successful with my subheading. I had many people say that they were good subheadings because I made them questions. Each question posed was explained in the paragraphs following it. I think they were successful because I guided the reader in the direction that I wanted them to be in. In other words, I wanted to inform them certain things at certain times.

Lastly, I was successful with my images. I had some people say they were successful because they illustrated my topic, and they made use of the free space. I knew that I needed make pictures. Therefore, I made sure to have one picture per page. I felt that too many pictures might distract the reader, so I made these pictures somewhat large, but they fit where I put them.

What kinds of arguments, rhetorical strategies, design choices and writing practices did you find the most effective for your project? Why?

I found that the arguments that stated both sides and the separate sides as most effective because they illustrated the view points of both sides. It is good to give the opinions and information that pertains to both sides because this is not a biased QRG.

A rhetorical strategy that was effective was the usage of tone because it allowed me to seem more appealing to the reader. I tried to write in an informal and casual tone to appeal to the general public. More people are able to easily read my paper without feeling overwhelmed.

A design choice that was the most effective for my project was separating the examples into separate paragraphs because they paragraphs would have been too big and overwhelming for the eye if they were kept together. Therefore, smaller paragraphs made use of my space better.

As goes for writing practices, I would say that I tried to be as informative as possible without providing too much personal opinion. I think this was successful because many people write too much of their personal opinions, and it conflicts with the facts and information that are provided.

MIT OpenCourseWare. "Reflection in a Hand Mirror." 9/12/07 via flickr.
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License.

What kinds of arguments, rhetorical strategies, design choices and writing practices did you find were not effective for your project? Why?

I thought arguments from certain social media posts were not effective in my project. I only used one of my social media resources because I did not think that too much opinion from people was appropriate. It was hard for me to change back to a non-biased tone if I were to use them.

I did not think a lot of sympathy as a rhetorical strategy could have been effective in my project. I thought that the sympathy could be given toward the obese children, but there were too many people fighting against the lunch program for me to do this adequately. I thought if I made the audience feel sympathy, it would be hard to transition to it and out of it.

They design choice that I thought would be unsuccessful would be a video. I thought a video would take away from the writing and pictures. I feel like a lot of people would just think that the video would have all of the information necessary for the QRG as a summary, so I wanted to avoid that.

A writing practice that was not effective was being too unbiased at some points. I did not want to add the letter that a concerned boy wrote to Michelle Obama because I thought it showed too much of the opposition against her program. However, I incorporated it because Lia thought that it would be beneficial. Now, I know it does help give my QRG some extra depth because it gave another opinion from someone who mattered (the children.

How was the writing process for this project similar to other school writing experiences you’ve had in the past?

This writing process for this project was similar to how our class in sophomore year of high school made our research papers. I had made my paper on childhood obesity because event then I knew that I wanted to be a dietitian. Like this project, we were required to do an annotated bibliography; however, it was handwritten on separate slips of paper. I thought those slips were very useful while writing my research paper because they directed me to the sources that I remembered and wanted to incorporate. Similarly, this project allowed me to go back to my annotated bibliography and review what the sources were about. From there, I was able to take out the information necessary. 

Also, we peer-edited each other's paper for this research paper like we did with the QRG. I thought it was beneficial because it is always good to have someone else review your paper. Sometimes, we get so wrapped up into writing our paper that we forget to incorporate background information or even some extra details that they might want to know.

How was the writing process for this project different from other school writing experiences you’ve had in the past?

The writing process for this project was different because we did not use as much technology to comment on others' papers. In the past, we passed out our papers and filled in sheets with comments. We also marked up the corrections on the papers as well. In our class for this project, we used Google docs's commenting feature to give feedback. I liked this, but I noticed a lot of people did not give grammatical feed back on the comments as much as people did when they corrected the actual papers.

Would any of the skills you practiced for this project be useful in your other coursework? Why or why not?

Yes, these skilled would be useful in my other coursework because I know I will have to write research papers for science classes. It is important to know how to cite, gather information, and to know the proper organization skills. I know a lot of students do not know how to write research papers. However, this project has helped me make sense of collecting sources through the use of an annotated bibliography. In any other research projects that I encounter, I plan to use an annotated bibliography.

Reflection

Olivia Wann's reflection was relatable, but I felt a little different about my QRG. I think that essay writing could definitely help for writing a QRG; however, it is not the same, but the basics of writing an analytical essay or research paper is very similar. She was right in how she said that the QRG's are more of reality. It made me think that the QRGs allow us to better see the topics written about because they are not totally biased or pure boring information.

Jovanka Potkonjak's reflection was relatable to me. I also thought that social media sources were hard to Incorporated into my QRG. I did not think they informed the reader enough about the issue at hand. I liked how Jovanka also struggled in writing her information because it is all science, and it is hard to describe every little aspect of engineering as it is with nutrition. Also, I thought that the research componment his helpful and useful in the future for other classes.