Hey! My name is Christal Aquino and this spring semester I was able to take the Writing for Social Sciences course. Throughout the semester, I wrote many different types of essays that I had never encountered before. With the many drafts and peer editing, I’ve been able to track my progress within my writing and see the growth. In this site I will share my writing pieces along with my progress. The following self-reflection will be a summary of all the content that I encountered, and with the help of the course learning outcomes I explained my progress and achievements.
I Got Through it Anyway: Self Reflection
Throughout the course of this semester I faced plenty of struggles within my writing. I have always felt that writing wasn’t my strength, but because I have been writing the same types of papers for so long, over time it became easier to put ideas together and get a well written product. However, this class took a turn that I had never seen before, in the sense that I had to write in styles that I’ve never written before, making it harder for me to focus on both the writing and content portion of the research project. Having to write research proposals, profiles, and observation and interview essays were new to me. Because this class took a shift towards ethnographic research, it became difficult for me to realize that not only was I supposed to conduct research and collect data, but I was also supposed to develop well written papers to prove my points. As a result, using the seven course learning outcomes, I was able to track my progress and view this course as a whole.
Over the years, as students, we tend to pick up on different writing styles and develop strengths that our peers may not have. This specific course learning outcome was practiced through peer editing. When a peer edits my work it’s easier for them to catch a mistake that I didn’t see because they have a more objective view. When I began to peer edit outlines, observation essays and interview essays it was much simpler to point out my peer’s biases rather than my own. (See #1 in pictures section https://cawfss.commons.gc.cuny.edu/pictures/ ). Because I am the one who chose my research topic, I already had a side in which I wanted to lead towards. For example, my research was about finding a connection between bullying and PTSD, so it would be in my favor to find all the negative outcomes of bullying to make my hypothesis correct, yet it is biased because there’s always two sides to a story. As a result, having a peer who had a completely different topic go over my writing pieces was a huge help because it helped me better analyze my own work for a better final draft.
I believe that drafting, revising and editing my own work was one of the hardest outcomes to follow. I have a tendency of not wanting to rewrite a writing piece because I feel as if the first draft is the best that I have to give. After receiving my research proposal grade and comments I realized how wrong I was. There were so many errors that I didn’t catch, but I’m sure that if I dedicated more time to self assessing it, I would’ve gotten a higher grade. (See #3 in pictures section https://cawfss.commons.gc.cuny.edu/pictures/ ). The opportunity to be able to rewrite my proposal made me realize that there’s always room for improvement. Drafting is necessary because it will help refine research content when you try to filter out the biases and decrease grammatical errors. Also, I believe that drafting shouldn’t be done all in one day. It’s good to be able to sleep on a draft so that the next day I can look at it with fresh eyes and be able to revise and edit any other aspects that may be unnecessary in my paper. Therefore, I believe that I have enhanced strategies for drafting, revising, editing, and self-assessing because throughout all the essays, it became easier for me to catch my own errors and improve my papers by simply following my own drafting steps.
An outcome that I struggled with was making sure that my writing was clear enough for everyone to understand. This outcome also has to do with biases and taking a step back from my own work because I had to keep in mind that I am the only researcher and the audience doesn’t know everything that I have learned about. It is essential to be explicit when it comes to research papers because everything should be written in plain text where the audience doesn’t have to assume anything. Also, I cannot assume that the audience knows what I know. Since I have spent about two months researching about children being bullied there are so many things that an average person may not know. For example, after spending two months trying to get in contact with organizations and experts and not receiving any answers, it became clear to me that bullying isn’t taken as serious. I noticed that the work bullying prevention organizations claimed to be doing was not being done, therefore I had to explicitly state that, so that my reader would understand. In addition, whenever I had an opinion I was very bias about it because my anger was showing. Rather than stating the facts in my observation essay, I was ranting about being upset because even while I was taking different approaches, no organization would help me. (See #4 in pictures section https://cawfss.commons.gc.cuny.edu/pictures/ ). After revising my observation essay, I had to eliminate my rants and biases because it was up to the reader to decide which side they want to take. In this precise course learning outcome I see a vast improvement because I learned to read my own paper from an objective point of view to catch any biases that may impede the reader from understanding all standpoints.
Developing and engaging in collaborative and social aspects of writing processes was made pretty simple in this course. Because the research paper project revolved around observations and interviews, there was plenty of engagement with different people, especially for me since I contacted over 20 organizations. Even though most of the organizations that I contacted didn’t even pick up the phone, the ones that did pick up tried their best to help me and refer me to other places, which shows plenty of engagement and collaboration. In terms of the writing processes, it was easy to write about observations and interviews, the hard part for me was trying to organize all the ethnographic notes in a cohesive way that takes the audience into consideration. With feedback from the professor as well as my peers, it was easy to find common errors that I could avoid for the next coming essays. (See #2 in pictures section https://cawfss.commons.gc.cuny.edu/pictures/ )Thus, I have accomplished this course learning outcome while also being able to improve in it with future writing pieces.
The most complicated course learning outcome for me was engaging in genre analysis and multimodal composing. I have always been used to writing research papers, thematic essays, critical lens essay and etc., but in this class it was much different. It was the first time I had ever heard of a research proposal and a profile so from the beginning I felt stuck. Although, with the examples that the professor gave us, it became more understandable and I had an idea of how I wanted to construct my papers. Before the research paper project came about, I had to do a profile on a peer after I interviewed them, which was a practice for the research paper project. My questions for the peer interview were so vague and spread out in, in the sense that they didn’t steer towards a specific answer. That served as a great practice for me because for my real interview that I was conducting, I was able to make opened questions that would help answer my research question. The peer interview also helped me pick out the most effective way to take notes for my future interview. In addition, I had never written a paper that was based on observations I had made, unless I was writing a narrative, and that was the first step to writing an observation essay. I formulated my essay as a story because throughout my entire research process I faced plenty of struggles in trying to find a location willing to speak to me, and that proved to me that bullying is a very sensitive topic in New York City. Because of the different types of papers I had to write, there were different writing styles for each and different ways to formulate each piece, which is why I am sure that I accomplished, learned, and improved this course learning outcome.
Formulating and articulating a stance through and in your writing relates back to conceiving a thesis statement. Making a thesis statement has now become simple for me, for the most part. In the thesis I just have to state my argument and what the rest of my paper will be about. The one part that I have trouble with in this course learning outcome is summarizing and not sounding redundant. For instance, because my research took a different turn, in my observation essay, I decided to write out my entire process, but because my processes consisted of the same things over and over just with different locations, I began to sound redundant. Sometimes I add too much extra words because I think it’ll make my paper better, but in reality it is really unnecessary and makes me sound repetitive. (See #5 in pictures section https://cawfss.commons.gc.cuny.edu/pictures/ ). I am able to keep focus on just writing about what’s in my thesis, rather than slowly falling off topic, but summarizing is where I have trouble. Of course, with the help of my peers and professor I was able to minimize my redundancy, helping my paper be more concise, yet having more substance. Therefore, I believe that articulating a stance was definitely achieved throughout this semester in this course.
Finally, the last course learning outcome is to practice using library sources, online databases and the internet. This course learning outcome is my favorite and the most helpful to me. There are tons of scholarly articles and journals online about bullying having negative effects on children, but there were none that stated anything about developing PTSD. With the help of the CCNY library and using their database, I was able to find over 5 articles, proposals and research findings about a connection between bullying and PTSD. Practicing using this database was very helpful because for the background information portion of my research proposal, that was exactly what I needed. It helped strengthen my hypothesis because I found other scholars who were also trying to figure out the same question. I was also able to see data that other researchers had found using surveys and polls about why PTSD is a possible outcome of bullying. As a result, I definitely accomplished this outcome and it was extremely helpful with my research proposal and observation essay.
This Writing for Social Sciences course has been very eye opening. It expanded my boundaries and introduced me to different writing styles that I will be able to use in the future. With the help of the course learning outcomes and feedback from my peers and professor I have seen growth in my writing. I am grateful for all the struggles and failures I faced in this class because it helped improve my writing and let me take a step back from my own work to realize my own biases. Finally, because of the research paper project I was able to speak to a few individuals and it helped me network, and now I have more options for future research papers.
