Reflective Letter
How Has Writing, Research, and Technology influenced...
My Writing???
Through this semester, I think my writing has definitely improved, especially my writing that happens “in the moment.” I am very much into strict, academic writing that entails many revisions and close editing. As much as I complain about writing papers, I enjoy the process, and I thrive off of the grades I receive. However, while blogging and tweeting academic rules really don’t apply. I feel like those avenues are supposed to expose the “rawness” of the writer; therefore, I didn’t do much revision of my writing there. I let them take on a life of their own. Every now and then I would reveal something about myself, and it normally was done more bluntly than it would have been in person or academically. Consider this paragraph and picture from two different blogs:
From "Ode to Technology" 3/1/2011
In addition, I would like to start a political blog, or at least actively contribute to an already established one. There are things I would like to say about politics, but I have to hold them in considering my future field, which is flooded with the Left Wing. Who wants to hear the rantings of an Conservative teacher after all?
Opps....I may have just ruined my chances.
From “Not Second Best, But Best For Last (for Boxer Writing Project)” 2/15/2011
From "Ode to Technology" 3/1/2011
In addition, I would like to start a political blog, or at least actively contribute to an already established one. There are things I would like to say about politics, but I have to hold them in considering my future field, which is flooded with the Left Wing. Who wants to hear the rantings of an Conservative teacher after all?
Opps....I may have just ruined my chances.
From “Not Second Best, But Best For Last (for Boxer Writing Project)” 2/15/2011
Within these blogs, I was able to mention my political stance, and I was allowed to show my sillier side for one of our projects. And yes, although I am a registered Conservative, I am not a stuffy, stuck up person. I sit and listen to all of my Liberal professors, and I regard them with the utmost respect while doing so. I think this mutual respect stems from our shared passion for writing, and for that I am very glad. The Weebly blog and Twitter allowed a close communication amongst me, my classmates and our professor, ultimately making trying new things and remaining open-minded less intimidating.
My writing was also influenced this sememester by an author we read early on in the semester, Pagnucci. While reading his article, Narrative Life, one quote stuck out and I have tried to remember it throughout this whole semester. Here is my blog post about it:
From "Two Readings...I enjoyed the Most" 1/27/2011
The other thing I liked about that reading was what Pagnucci said about using "I." Up until about last semester, I was told by all of my professors to leave out "I" in my papers. It was only really during last semester that I was encouraged to use it in some my papers. And it makes sense. We inevitably put ourselves into each paper we write, so why not include the giant elephant in the middle of the room? USE I!
I am an education major, which this semester has also made me question, but that is beside the point and would take another 6 pages to write. Anyway, the papers for that major are always so strict and they seem to leave out the personality and thoughts of the future teacher, which just so happens to be ME! The more you think about it, the less sense it makes. That is why I love Pagnucci’s philosophy, and I am happy that most of the Writing Arts professors at Rowan follow his suggestion.
My writing was also influenced this sememester by an author we read early on in the semester, Pagnucci. While reading his article, Narrative Life, one quote stuck out and I have tried to remember it throughout this whole semester. Here is my blog post about it:
From "Two Readings...I enjoyed the Most" 1/27/2011
The other thing I liked about that reading was what Pagnucci said about using "I." Up until about last semester, I was told by all of my professors to leave out "I" in my papers. It was only really during last semester that I was encouraged to use it in some my papers. And it makes sense. We inevitably put ourselves into each paper we write, so why not include the giant elephant in the middle of the room? USE I!
I am an education major, which this semester has also made me question, but that is beside the point and would take another 6 pages to write. Anyway, the papers for that major are always so strict and they seem to leave out the personality and thoughts of the future teacher, which just so happens to be ME! The more you think about it, the less sense it makes. That is why I love Pagnucci’s philosophy, and I am happy that most of the Writing Arts professors at Rowan follow his suggestion.
My Research???
I think the most important thing I took away from WRT regarding research is that oral histories are invaluable. I have conducted interviews for other research papers in the past, but they done via email. Although convenient and speedy, email is often impersonal, and sometimes things can get mixed up. For instance, one professor I email-interviewed last semester didn’t even bother to answer half of the questions I sent her. She just focused on two. Although she gave me thorough answers for those two questions, I needed help with the others as well. I never emailed her again because I felt like I would be a pest if I did. However, while conducting the oral histories for our research project, I was free to interject and ask for clarification right then and there, and if more interesting topics were mentioned by the interviewee, the loose, conversational format of an oral history allowed for shared dialogue between the participant and the interviewees. definitely liked this structure a lot, and I was excited to get started with the oral history aspect of our research project after reading “What is Oral History?”. Although it would be a new challenge, oral histories were something I was already a big fan of—just as I blogged about:
From “I <3 the History Channel—website “What is Oral History?” 3/21/2011
…My husband and I religiously follow Swamp People, American Pickers, and Pawn Stars--all shows that I was reminded of while reading through "What is Oral History."
The first quote that stuck out to me was "oral history is, at its heart, a dialogue." All of the shows I mentioned are just that.
As you can see in the Oral Histories part of my group’s research website, our attempts turned out pretty well too!
The next thing that I learned regarding research was that it is better accomplished in groups. The actual writing process was hard to do together just because of scheduling and unforeseen illness, but researching together was enjoyable. We all got to bounce ideas off of each other, and help one another with sources. One of my group members, Dawn Roy, actually tweeted a great article to me that I wound up using for my part of the project.
@DawnnRoy Dawn Marie Roy “@nprnews: 1 in 4 Supermarket Meat Samples Tainted With Drug-Resistant Bacteria http://t.co/yp08hPj” @Linzz88 @norris63
In the future, I would love to try more collaborative research and writing, especially when grades and busy school schedules aren’t factors.
From “I <3 the History Channel—website “What is Oral History?” 3/21/2011
…My husband and I religiously follow Swamp People, American Pickers, and Pawn Stars--all shows that I was reminded of while reading through "What is Oral History."
The first quote that stuck out to me was "oral history is, at its heart, a dialogue." All of the shows I mentioned are just that.
As you can see in the Oral Histories part of my group’s research website, our attempts turned out pretty well too!
The next thing that I learned regarding research was that it is better accomplished in groups. The actual writing process was hard to do together just because of scheduling and unforeseen illness, but researching together was enjoyable. We all got to bounce ideas off of each other, and help one another with sources. One of my group members, Dawn Roy, actually tweeted a great article to me that I wound up using for my part of the project.
@DawnnRoy Dawn Marie Roy “@nprnews: 1 in 4 Supermarket Meat Samples Tainted With Drug-Resistant Bacteria http://t.co/yp08hPj” @Linzz88 @norris63
In the future, I would love to try more collaborative research and writing, especially when grades and busy school schedules aren’t factors.
My thoughts/use of/frustration with Technology???
Well, it has definitely been a love hate relationship with technology for me this semester. Let's talk about the good first.
Twitter, is a god, and that should be on a T-shirt—more about that thought later. I used Twitter for another class a few semester ago, but before this class, I hadn’t tweeted for months. I liked getting back into it, and I liked getting to know my classmates better via Twitter as well. It’s such a great way to get little glimpses into people’s lives and also find out about something very quickly.
Another good thing that came out of this class technologically, is that I learned how to edit (although still primitively right now) and upload different kinds of Youtube videos. I think that was actually one of my goals at the start of the semester, and I am glad I fulfilled it. I had also wanted to start blogging more, so I was happy to get started on the Weebly site, and I’m actually hoping to continue using my site for more personal things after this semester. I need to write more, and I think blogging will help me do that in a non-threatening way.
Yet, with both of these great technologies, I also shed many tears over hardships I ran into using them. Looking back, they weren’t huge deals, but I’m a crier—there is not stopping that.
The first major issue I ran into was learning to navigate around Weebly. Everytime I would change a font in one area, it would change the fonts throughout my whole site. While finalizing my twitterive, I somehow wound up deleting a whole column, and I had to reformat and rewrite certain parts. I cried, and with those tears some choice words also flowed out, but all is well that ends well. I like how it turned out, and I’m sure the next thing I do like this will look even better. I also had trouble using youtube to convert some music files for my twitterive as well. Weebly doesn’t allow you to directly upload audio files unless you use the pro version, which costs some amount of money a month. Needless to say, I’m a college student—there was no way I was spending money on something else, so I dealt with the misfortunes of the regular version. After I published my video with my audio in Windows Movie Maker as an AVI file I thought it was supposed to be, it wouldn’t load. I cursed for like an hour before I decided to tweet about it at 12am, and thank God I did so. I got quick responses from @xomanda7ox and @billwolff. They both tried to help me, and @billwolff’s suggestion wound up working—I had to publish the videos as WMV files. For this late night redemption, I will forever be indebted to Twitter.
Twitter, is a god, and that should be on a T-shirt—more about that thought later. I used Twitter for another class a few semester ago, but before this class, I hadn’t tweeted for months. I liked getting back into it, and I liked getting to know my classmates better via Twitter as well. It’s such a great way to get little glimpses into people’s lives and also find out about something very quickly.
Another good thing that came out of this class technologically, is that I learned how to edit (although still primitively right now) and upload different kinds of Youtube videos. I think that was actually one of my goals at the start of the semester, and I am glad I fulfilled it. I had also wanted to start blogging more, so I was happy to get started on the Weebly site, and I’m actually hoping to continue using my site for more personal things after this semester. I need to write more, and I think blogging will help me do that in a non-threatening way.
Yet, with both of these great technologies, I also shed many tears over hardships I ran into using them. Looking back, they weren’t huge deals, but I’m a crier—there is not stopping that.
The first major issue I ran into was learning to navigate around Weebly. Everytime I would change a font in one area, it would change the fonts throughout my whole site. While finalizing my twitterive, I somehow wound up deleting a whole column, and I had to reformat and rewrite certain parts. I cried, and with those tears some choice words also flowed out, but all is well that ends well. I like how it turned out, and I’m sure the next thing I do like this will look even better. I also had trouble using youtube to convert some music files for my twitterive as well. Weebly doesn’t allow you to directly upload audio files unless you use the pro version, which costs some amount of money a month. Needless to say, I’m a college student—there was no way I was spending money on something else, so I dealt with the misfortunes of the regular version. After I published my video with my audio in Windows Movie Maker as an AVI file I thought it was supposed to be, it wouldn’t load. I cursed for like an hour before I decided to tweet about it at 12am, and thank God I did so. I got quick responses from @xomanda7ox and @billwolff. They both tried to help me, and @billwolff’s suggestion wound up working—I had to publish the videos as WMV files. For this late night redemption, I will forever be indebted to Twitter.
All in All...
This class was more than I bargained for, but the rewards were more than I expected. I truly feel like I have grown as a writer, and I was able to learn about interesting topics while doing so, especially concerning the food industry. I was able to make technological leaps, even past some of the things my husband can do on a computer. Above all, I was reminded that Twitter should never be underestimated. It can solve almost any problem. Now, there’s no stopping me.