Today for class I had my paper planned out in my notebook through notes and partially typed up. I felt that I had been a bit lazy on typing up my rough draft but I have a concrete idea of what I am including. I just need to type it up and have it go through the revision process. I learned in peer review that my approach does in fact make sense outside of my brain to others. I hope to finish this paper.
Analysis Planning
Tuesday 9/5
I have minimal prior experience with analysis. I have done a handful of these types of writing in high school but not intensively. When I did an analysis paper in my writing class senior year of high school, I struggled with moving away from summary and writing about the content to analyzing the author’s work. I did not focus enough on the author’s writing techniques. The critique from that paper showed me that summary is important to provide context and background for the analysis but should not be the main point.
As I look for an article to analyze, I plan to pick something with enough content to write about but not a long or dense article. That will prove to be too hard as I will exceed the word count and not cover enough of the article. I am also looking for something that I am interested in and will hold my attention. I am to choose from the topic lifestyle but if I pick an article about cars or sports, I will get bored too easily. To start writing the analysis I’ll identify the audience and the main purpose of the article. From there I will work my way from the beginning of the article and discuss the author’s choices in layout, word usage, and other elements of writing. I plan to have a rough draft for peer review but if I am relying on past experience, it will not be done on time.
Thursday 9/7
My article
Summary Reflection
For this summary assignment, I started out cutting too much information from the article. I took three sentences to sum up the first paragraph. After I realized I was cutting too much, I went back to add more. I also let the word count hinder my progress. I was worried I would have too many words, which is silly since any work can be edited. I tend to edit my thoughts before they become sentences. This causes problems when I start assignments early. I often can’t get past this mental block unless I feel pressured to meet an upcoming deadline (typically within a few hours). I try to free-write as a means of planning out my writing and starting any thoughts. Sometimes I even sensor myself during free-writing. This block also leads to me putting assignments off. My inability to come up with ideas I find worthy of writing, even for a draft, makes the task seem larger than it really is. To avoid this, I try and break up the assignment into even smaller chunks. However, sometimes I feel this also makes my task seem bigger. It just adds to the number of things I have to do. For example, my list might look like: pick article, read article, find thesis, pick out main points, find support, type. This seems like more work than: find an article, read article, type up summary. Once this starts to happen, I try and switch my mentality to make the assignment easier. One goal I have for the next assignment is to create a schedule and stick to it. I currently track my tasks with a running to-do list. This causes problems when I just move tasks to the next day without thinking about the upcoming deadline. Hopefully setting deadlines for myself will also encourage me to stick with them.