Reflection on Project 2

In the following post, I will reflect on the process of writing my Rhetorical Analysis utilizing the "Reflecting on Your Own Revision Process" from the Writing Public Lives reading.

Geralt. "Thinking Light Bulb" 2/21/2015 via pixabay. CC0 Public Domain License.

Reflecting on Your Own Revision Process

1. What was specifically revised from one draft to another?

The most heavily revised portion of my paper was the introduction and conclusion, in large part because the blog post indicated that we should through out our old ones.


2. Point to global changes: how did you reconsider your thesis or organization?

I reconsidered and reorganized my thesis to more thoroughly embody the purpose of the project. I did not change the organization of the paper as I felt it was in accordance with the Project 2 Purpose. However, my introduction in general was lacking in this aspect.


3. What led you to these changes? A reconsideration of audience? A shift in purpose?

My changes were a result of both reconsidering the audience and shifting my purpose. I, overall, needed to step back and readjust the broader scope of the project. In focusing so heavily on the article itself, I forgot about the main purpose of the project.


4. How do these changes affect your credibility as an author?

In the context of the project, this increases my credibility as (with my changes) I was able to actually accomplish the purpose of the project. For example, if I had turned in my rough draft without any of the changes, I would have completely failed to complete my professor's wish - to write an article on how someone in my field constructs an argument, etc.


5. How will these changes better address the audience or venue?

These changes better tuned my paper to the audience (new students in my field). This is also related to what I said above in number 4.


6. Point to local changes: how did you reconsider sentence structure and style?

I really didn't change anything in terms of how I actually wrote the paper. I have a writing style that (I hope) works for me, and I don't really feel the need to change it in most cases. I did listen to those who edited my paper as far as sentences that didn't seem to fit or make sense.


7. How will these changes assist your audience in understanding your purpose?

Generally speaking, the structural and stylistic changes will hopefully help my audience to understand everything better, not just the purpose, innately through the fact that everything transitions well and is easy to read.


8. Did you have to reconsider the conventions of the particular genre in which you are writing?

No. I have been writing essays like this all through high school. I was very well-versed in the genre. One new addition, however, was our intense focus on the Rhetorical Situation itself.


9. Finally, how does the process of reflection help you reconsider your identity as a writer? 

One thing I really did learn was to make 100% sure you understand your purpose when you start writing. That sounds like a really trivial thing, but I definitely strayed from the Project 2 purpose here and there. I understood the conventions of what we were writing, but didn't translate them well into who we were writing for.

Reflection

I read Morgan and Kelly's reflection blog posts. 

We seemed to unanimously agree that we all learned to focus more on the beginning stages of writing  in any project. In this project particular, that meant ensuring that we understood the purpose of the project and who we were writing for. Kelly and I both agreed that (8) we understood the conventions of writing a Rhetorical Analysis, but got lost in the translation of those conventions into Project 2. I related very well to what Kelly and Morgan said in their reflections on the Project 2 process.