Reflection on Project 1

My Reflections on the Quick Reference Guide

In this post, I will consider and reflect on my work that went into creating my Project #1 Quick Reference Guide, now that I've completed it. In the process, I may learn something new about my writing from the experience I've had over the past month.

Deboni, José Eduardo, "Some Considerations" 20 August 2008 via flickr.com.
Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC-BY 2.0) License.

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

My main challenges were the compiling and formatting of images, and dedicated revision. I found it difficult to find images that were relevant to my topic and fit in well with my QRG, which I attribute to my topic being somewhat esoteric and about China, which isn't really in the western sphere of technology and internet. I overcame this by just searching smartly and trying multiple approaches to formatting and keeping an open mind. I also had trouble carrying out dedicated revisions, as I have only once or twice before revised one piece of writing so many times, but I think that I learned how valuable it can be to perform four or five revisions, which is what I did to deal with my challenge in revising - I just sat down, and make sure I did it. And I think I'm better for it now.

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

I think I saw many successes in the project in planning my writing. I not only think I was successful in the actual writing of my QRG with the sections, which allowed me to organize my writing and explanations, but I was also successful in understanding what my QRG would be like when I created the Clustermap for the earlier assignments. I thought that the coggle.com clustermap was incredibly cool and useful, and I saw great successes with it. I plan to use it in other works from now on!

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

I found a neutral stance to be the most helpful when it came to creating an argument for my QRG, as I was able to focus on providing information and explanations while writing with it, which in my opinion is the most important aspect of the QRG genre. Additionally, I found contrast and parallelism to be among the most useful rhetorical strategies and writing choices as I created my QRG because I was able to display differing evidence clearly and write my points in between or following the parallel, contrasting sentences or paragraphs. 

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

For my writing, I found much of the reading's advice on theses not of use to me, as they detailed how to make arguments, but the QRG genre needs to have some level of distance from the topic and avoid total bias. While some elements of the theses could be helpful, such as lessons on how to construct them, I didn't find thesis-based construction to be helpful in my writing. I also didn't find images on to be very helpful for me in writing the QRG, as I felt that it was more of a chore to add them to my piece and they didn't help me in organizing my writing very much. However, as a convention of the QRG genre, I still had them in my piece.

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

I think that the explanatory nature of the QRG made it similar in writing process to literary analyses, at least in my mind. My reasoning behind this is that in literary analyses, one is to construct an examination on a topic in a writing and ground the writing in evidence from the text, just as a QRG writer must examine a controversy and root the QRG in evidence and sources related to the topic. I think that the two are also similar in that they integrate quotes into the writings. I suppose the primary differences between the two are that QRGs are usually written without the reader having knowledge on the topic whereas the readers know the text referred to in literary analyses.

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

I found the QRG's writing process to be extremely different from that of historical essays that I've written in the past. I say this because in historical essays, the writer's primary focus and central component in the writing is their thesis, and they cite evidence from history to construct an argument that supports their thesis. This is different from the QRG because in QRGs the emphasis is on informing, not extracting an argument from the information, and QRGs are typically on recent controversies or events, unlike the history essays I've written in the past which had topics on thousands-year-old civilizations or on 19th century America, for instance.

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

I actually think I learned a couple skills from writing my QRG that will prove useful in the future. Chief among those skills is organization of writing, which I learned and practiced extensively in writing the QRG thanks to the clutermap exercise and sections of the piece itself. I learned the value of having a well-planned work, and I aim to carry that lesson onto future works because I don't think having a plan for writing could ever be bad. I also learned how to research and integrate research into my writing much better from this project since that was such a large component in the process of writing the QRG, and I think that skill will obviously help me in the future whenever I write a work that requires research and sources.

Reflection

I read the Project #1 Reflections of Carter and Kelly, and found both similar and differing opinions on what the important lessons to be taken from the QRG are.

I found that I largely agreed with Carter's responses because he highly valued the section-based format of the QRG for the structure it brought his writing. I had the same thoughts in my responses, and thought the QRG had a great organizational quality that it lent to the writing process.

I had more varied opinions on Kelly's responses, but thought that they were very thought-provoking. Namely, I completely agreed with Kelly's approach to the writing process of the QRG through a neutral stance to present information and explanations, and with her decision to make her QRG's conclusion present the ideas she had that were not presented earlier in the piece. However, I also disagreed with Kelly on the grounds of images being an effective organizational tool and social media sources not being useful, as I actually disliked having to include images in my work yet I found an immensely useful social media post that gave my QRG direction.

I suppose that what I can take away from reading others' reflections is that organizing one's writing is very important when writing an extended piece, but that every writer finds uses in different elements in their own ways. I think that, in the future, I will try to approach every large writing assignment with a mind on how I will best organize my thoughts into writing for the work.