Jaidyn's Writing Self-Assessment

In my original academic writing self-evaluation, I wrote that my least favorite part of research papers is doing the actual research. I have to say (and I’m not making this up for the sake of this post) that researching for the final paper actually wasn’t horrible. The resources that Dr. Burton and Robert Means shared with us really helped me feel comfortable doing research. I didn’t get overwhelmed by information, and I was able to look at a variety of sources– newspapers, articles, and ebooks. 

I feel like the idea for my paper started as a tiny seed and grew as I actually found sources. With that said, I’m not sure if this was the best way to formulate my claim. If I had had a definite idea of exactly what I wanted to say from the beginning, my research would have been more focused and efficient. Of course, because the research process is not necessarily independent of the drafting process, I was still continuing to find sources even while I wrote. In the future, I’ll practice developing a powerful claim early on so that I have a clearer idea about what supporting information I’ll need.

One thing I wish I had been able to do better was find the proper balance between sources and my own commentary. I hate feeling like my writing is just an amalgamation of other people’s ideas, connected by a few words of my own. On the other hand, sometimes I worry that if I don’t have enough support, my papers won’t be credible or mature. I’m still working on finding a good middle ground. I think maybe if I made formal analysis a bigger part of my writing, I would feel more like a valid contributor to my own work.

Being social with the writing process did help me, especially because I am inclined to be very private about the things I write. The peer critiques we did were nice, because sometimes I view my writing like my child– I don’t want to recognize its flaws, and need someone else to do it for me. I wish that I had been more social with my research– to be honest, when I came home a few weeks ago, a lot of my motivation drained away. However, I know that I’ll be doing a lot of writing in the future, and I plan to use social research as a means to gather and test ideas. 

I loved that I could use informal online sources for my writing in this class. When I was a kid learning how to write reports, I would google random websites to use for my “research,” but by the time I got to college I realized that googling doesn’t often give you valid sources. However, it’s been really cool to learn how to properly use informal sources so that they enrich my writing instead of cheapening it.

Overall, I feel like this final paper taught me a lot about the writing process. Regardless of how well it actually turned out, I’ve learned enough skills to be certain that next time I have to do a similar project, my claim will be stronger, my research more relevant, and my socialization more impactful.