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Tuesday April 4th, ENG 110-39

Reflecting on my process while I constructed the three projects, I recognized a clear pattern. I usually and annoyingly procrastinate until the last minute to do everything, without fail, every time. I sit at my desk at home for hours and try to concentrate but end up eating pasta and watching a movie before I realize that time is too short to spend it all eating pastas. Also... deadlines. I start playing a little background music but usually end up turning it off because the little white noise bothers me enough to distract me. I do my drafts with pen and paper, to allow me to write whatever comes to my head and place a thought in a general area that I can revisit later, when constructing further drafts. I prefer an organized format, just to give me the spatial advantage and help me recognize the most valuable information from the whole collection of sources. I try to go in one straight shot, such as sit down for 5 hours straight and knocking out a draft than taking a break. That way, the concepts are fresh in my head and I am not forgetting possible ideas if I waited to construct my pieces later. I drink a lot of water when I constructed all of these projects, but i usually drink a lot of water anyway. For all of my projects, I consistently utilized my cognitive abilities only at night, I guess that is just when I work best. 

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Tuesday March 21st, ENG 110-39

In regards to revising the first project, I was more careless and eager to be through with the proof reading. Determined that my concepts were obviously agreeable and factual, skimming my own text was a simple task. While proof reading my second project, I took more time to carefully review my ideas and justify them again in my own head. Reviewing my work allowed me to revisit some specific concepts and help me better understand my own writing, to better understand the point I was trying to convince the audience of. The goal of my piece needed to be understood by me before I could possibly expect an audience to conceptualize it. The relationship between my process and my chosen genre is that my genre helps to support my process. By fluently letting my thoughts flow to the paper and by physically mapping out my thought process on paper helps me to better organize later on. When I am composing a piece, I prefer writing with pen and paper, in an outline layout, to give me a coherent map of the idea I am trying to convey to an audience and to help me construct a discernible goal for my piece. 

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Tuesday March 28th, ENG 110-39

Typically, I don’t think of a lot of common things I encounter daily as a genre. Not as how I would consider a genre through an academic eye. As a student writer, most of the genres I have constructed have included informational powerpoints, research essays and personal narratives. Considering the “non-academic” genres, social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat are all technologically associated genres that allows me to communicate to a specific audience, in these cases, my followers. Celebratory cards including birthday, anniversary, holiday, etc. are also fun and visually interactive genres that less frequently use. When thinking processes involved with our three projects, the C-in-3-G project allows us, as students, to employ not one process, but three of our processes. The first two projects were included in the long essay genre but the C-in-3-G project allows for different visual interaction of the author’s intended meaning. This opportunity provides different genres to reconstruct the intended meaning in a new form of communication, which could open the concept up to whole new audiences within the online world. 

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Tuesday March 14th, ENG 110-39

Originally, I was paired to workshop my first draft of the Inquiry Based Research Essay with Colby, but I ended up peer reviewing Marissa’s draft. The first drafts were posted in a group that allowed the permitted members to see uploaded files so I found Marissa’s and read it. From reading her draft, I realized that I had to step up my game in my own draft, as she had already gotten her ideas off paper and into paragraph form. I always write my drafts down on paper because it helps me scramble all my ideas down and I don’t have to be constantly worried about coherency or flow. My sources are very strong supporters and I think provide solid evidence to potentially allow the readers to formulate an opinion on my stated question. What is currently holding me back from formulating my next draft is just limited amount of general information regarding my topic. I know the main ideas but I need to small and intricate components in order to provide readers with solid evidence and explanations. Before the deadline, I need to get at least 2 more sources (one supporting, one disagreeing) to include in my essay. I also need to find solid media sources that will properly represent my topic. 

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Tuesday February 28th, ENG 110-39

When describing my experiences with research, they are rather limited to scholarly assignments. I have never conducted a research essay unless it had been assigned to me in school. In any one I have written, usually the topic is given to me or several topics are given as options from which I could chose from. Utilizing our CofC resources, I’ve visited the online library databases to find sources that could be used to supporting or refuting evidence within my work. I am aware of how to navigate throughout the legitimate library in order to find hard backed sources as well, though I am more partial to the online database. It allows a quicker search with more possible results. When approaching this research project, I am pleased to get to chose my own topic. Having the freedom to write about anything you want makes a 7-10 page paper seem less daunting because the writer gets to write about a topic that is actually interesting to them. Not to say all teachers pick dry topics, but it’s hard to please everyone. I will be researching seasonal depression and it’s chemical affect on the brain. I will investigate possible causes and symptoms and effective treatments of a season linked depression. Focusing on the neurological components and relating them to light-deprived emotions of an affected individual, I will derive a conclusion if a change in season can physically alter brain chemistry. 

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Tuesday February 1st, ENG 110-39

The annotating and reading activity we did in class demonstrated the anatomy of a scholarly article and how to find the most relevant and important information of a scholarly article. Ideally, a whole article should be read in order to ensure the greatest understanding of the given content. Though, there are some scholarly articles that are pages upon pages long and reading the whole thing for only a few pieces of information may not be in an author’s most efficient interest. 

Skimming is utilized in order to save an author time, by cutting the amount of information that needs to be read. It also saves the author time if the article ends up being irrelevant to the author’s intended content. By skimming an article, key concepts can be drawn while ensuring efficient timing. The three components I always look to first when skimming are the title, abstract and discussion. These components allow for a general concept of the piece to be created and attempts to confront the rhetorical situation at hand. At times, not all parts of a standard scholarly article are provided, and in this case, I generally look for the title, results with figures, and conclusion. These also provide readers with the necessary information to dissect an article. 

In our activity during class, we learned that the basic components can provide the most valuable textual evidence to support our claim. By learning to exploit the advantages of skimming a scholarly article, an author saves time and gets the most useful information out of a text. The useful concepts vary based on their value within a piece, and being able to identify the most valuable information helps to provide the best analysis. 

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Tuesday February 6th, ENG 110-39

When composing the first draft of my source-based article project, I looked over the rubric and wrote down, with pencil and paper, a general composite of the assignment’s requirements. I usually prefer doing all first drafts on paper, just so that I can visually see and organize my thoughts. This also helps me so that I do not immediately try to create something intricate out of a basic idea and allows me to add content and analysis. My first draft consisted of three pages, the first page, a definition of the parts of the assignments in my own terms and a list of works, authors included, of which I could draw concepts and quotations from. The second page involved all quotes I found intriguing, a few from most of the works provided, and a quick note on how I would allow the quote to help support my article. On the last page, I constructed a diagram, including definitions, that helped me better understand the interaction between genre, rhetorical situation and audience. I also gave a brief overview of my chosen genre and how I would apply this to the terms defined previously. 

When composing my first draft, I went to the library to find some peace and quiet and gather my thoughts in a constructive environment. I prefer to go to the back of the second floor, where the private cubicles are, because this area has the least amount of noise, people and distractions. I keep my phone on my desk or in my bag while I am doing any kind of work, usually on vibrate, just in case anything super important happens on Snapchat or Instagram.  I also think having an occasionally break from staring a paper in the face is important, just as a little mental departure from the educational sphere. I believe having a quiet place with limited distractions is important while doing homework, so that the given content has a greater chance of being comprehended and further analyzed. 

Having access to a secluded space in the College of Charleston’s library allowed me to focus more on the work that I needed to produce and help me construct, in my point of view, a very helpful outline of what will become a final draft. Though, using my phone can definitely deter my end goal, I like having a little break to give my brain a break and really think about what I am going to write about next. In general, I would say that the construction of my first draft was a positive experience, but in the future, I would aspire to create a first draft that aligns better in ratio with the final draft’s requirements. In other words, I will try to make my first draft longer, so that making my next draft’s will not seem so daunting. 

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Tuesday January 17th, ENG 110-39

A writing process is used when someone is trying to convey their thoughts and ideas in a way that will be familiar to the understanding of readers. A writing process doesn’t just mean scribbling pen on paper. A thorough thought process must be used in order to identify the most appealing and useful vocabulary and descriptive techniques to both support your argument or idea and to assist readers with the intended understanding. I know my writing processes are usually a bit distracted, mostly because I feel like the more time I try to elaborate on a specific topic, the more opportunities I feel I have to go off track. The experiences I am drawing from are mostly educational experiences, whether that may be a generic five paragraph- hamburger style paper or research papers.