Reflection on Project 1

After a long process of writing and revising my Quick Reference guide, I am going to reflect on my successes and challenges.

1. Challenges

I found it difficult to write about the same topic over the course of many blog posts.  I found that I lost track of what I already written and what I had not yet covered.  The revising process became easier with the amount of information that I had written in organized previous posts, but the writing process was creatively exhausting.  It was difficult to keep the audience in mind, in terms of how the information was coming across to them, while still writing a QRG with enough information to cover all parts of the rubric.  The rubric itself was really the most challenging part to comprehend.  The amount of information and how much each topic had to addressed was a little disconcerting.  I believe that I did end up covering all of the necessary parts of the rubric, but it was a difficult process.

2. Successes

Researching for sources was the most interesting and surprisingly easy part of the QRG.  The topic was such a new topic that there was a pretty comprehensive amount of information and social media on Alaska and climate change.  I also found there to be a lot more creative room to write in a semi-casual tone.  I didn't need to write intense analysis or include descriptions of complicated scientific jargon in order to get the point across.  It was a nice change spending energy writing about the background surrounding an event without the purpose being to make a defined political or social statement about the issue. 

3. Effective arguments, rhetorical strategies, design choices, and writing practices

When creating my subheadings for this QRG, I made sure to keep them as direct and casual as possible.  By keeping the subheadings so specific, it helped me focus my paragraphs on only one specific topic, knowing that I would be inclined to ramble.  After the last revisions, my paragraphs were a little bulkier than typical QRG, but they were a lot more clear and focused on the main ideas than in the first drafts.  In terms of design choices, I tried to make sure that the pictures occurred at similar intervals.  I did not want an overwhelming amount of text or too many pictures in odd locations.  My last revisions were entirely focused on making sure each of the pages were easily readable and could be skimmed.

4. Ineffective arguments, rhetorical strategies, design choices, and writing practices

I found that I spent far too much time arguing about the importance of the issue and not enough presenting information to the audience.  The audience is looking more for information and context than they are opinionated writing.  My writing practices have been debate or creatively centered for a majority of past projects.  Writing background information and avoiding having a bias in that presented final product was very difficult.  I had a hard time separating my own voice from bias.

5. Writing process similarities

Construction of paragraphs and deciding the order of information required a similar process to that of writing an essay.  There is a significant level of planning and revising required in all projects that I write.  Citations are also a commonality in every writing project.

6. Writing process differences

Blogs, in general, require a completely different skill set to writing essays.  Essays do not have hyperlinks or plan the visual appeal to the same level that is required in a blog.  It was odd to go out of my way to link to websites for the audience to read on their own.  I am very used to only utilizing the amount of sources that I can effectively analyze.  The short paragraphs were also a little difficult to write at first.  Once I found a comfortable amount of information to include in one paragraphs, formatting and splitting up paragraphs got significantly easier.  

7. Are the newfound skills useful?

The grammatical exercises and revision process will be useful for future projects.  I can't say I will be writing many blogs in my scientific career, but the research, citations, and revisions will definitely be required for papers and grant writing.  Any practice researching for the right and most useful material is good practice.  I also haven't been in the habit of spending much time revising lately, so the fact that this project required multiple layers of revision was definitely a good use of time.

REFLECTION:

After reading Laurence and Chelsea's blogs I found the general consensus to be that this was a very difficult project.  The process was unlike anything we have had to write before and although we had the skill set from years of writing to accomplish the project, it was semi-exhausting.  The amount of work for such short and concise paragraphs was a little frustrating.  Laurence pointed out that the constant writing required that we really had to buckle down.  This is absolutely true.  I still haven't worked out all the kinks in terms of time management, but I'm still pretty happy with the work I put into my QRG and the other blogs.  Chelsea's experience was very similar to my own.  The subheadings were important to having focused paragraphs, and keeping bias to a minimum and splitting up paragraphs was difficult.