The project I have decided to showcase is my first project. For this project I had to analyze my own learning style and mindset using Dweck and Bain’s ideas as well as my own personal experiences.
Learning Outcome 1: Revision
Reflection (250-450 words): Coming into English 110 my revision process was very basic. Normally, I would create a first draft and become attached to it and not want to change much about it. The most I would do to edit my first draft would be to fix local, grammatical issues and maybe change the wording of a few sentences. Even though this may seem like minimum effort, and it was I still received high marks for my essays in high school reinforcing to me that I did not have to try very hard to succeed in writing. This all changed when I got to college and was assigned my first project, the reflective learner essay. It became very clear from the start of the project that my old approach would no longer cut it, to succeed on this assignment I had to integrate multiple sources together and make massive changes to my rough draft so that the final draft was almost a completely different essay. After creating my first draft, it was very tempting to become attached to it and not add any significant changes as this approach had worked for me throughout my entire academic career. luckily I was able to suppress this urge and after receiving peer feedback I was ready to make the necessary changes. In my first draft I did not layer and integrate the other sources as much as was expected from the final product so I edited each paragraph, making sure that the ideas of multiple sources were used. Additionally I removed an entire paragraph and replaced it as it was incoherent and didn’t really fit well in the essay. After all the edits I ended up with an essay that I could be proud of as I actually put time and effort into it instead of just writing it all the night before and not making any real changes.
Learning Outcome 2: Integrating Sources
Reflection (250-450 words): Integrating the ideas of multiple sources was a very large portion of the first project as it was expected that most of us did not normally integrate the ideas of multiple sources and were instead conditioned to use a single quote from a single source per paragraph. This was certainly how I was taught to write essays in high school and so I knew going into this project that I was going to have to go above and beyond and actually apply myself to succeed. When writing my rough draft I tried to keep in mind the fact that multiple sources needed to be used per paragraph however I did not end up getting this part right on my first draft. It was only after peer review and highlighting each source to see where they were used that I realized which paragraphs needed to be worked on and which ones I got mostly right. After making note of which paragraphs needed to be worked on, I looked back at my sources to find additional quotes and ideas I could integrate into the paragraphs that needed it. This was the hardest part of the process as I needed to pick new quotes and ideas that related to those of the other source. Although this process was difficult it payed off as I was able to integrate multiple sources in each body paragraph. For example, in the introduction I used information from both Dweck and Bain to connect the two.
Learning Outcomes 5 & 6: MLA and Surface-Level
Reflection (150-450 words): As far as MLA citations go that is one of the areas that I was well prepared for from high school and middle school. As such I did not need to make many improvements in this area. Although my MLA citations and formatting needed no fixes or improvements my surface level editing was not fully developed. Usually I would leave it up to googles auto correct function to make the fixes for me, however in order to ensure that unnecessary points were not deducted simply because I did not take the time to read my essay over I made sure to read over my essay and make fixes as needed, however I still missed a few errors here and there and even now I feel this is an area that I definitely need to work on.
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