Reflection

At the start of the research process, I knew I wanted to focus on Feminism and Technology, but within that there are so many different topics of interest and connections between the two. The more research I did, the more I came across a clear and concise topic to approach within my paper. Additionally, I was fairly confused on how to narrow down my sources and the information within them.There was so much interesting information contained within the pieces that I wanted to touch upon and draw conclusions from, but I did not know how to organize it. As I wrote the research proposal and my initial two drafts, slowly, buy surely, was I able to develop a clear thesis and learn how to organize six sources worth of information in a way that was more so analytical than summary-based.  

Since my first essay, and the beginning of the course, I feel as though my analytical skills, reading, writing, and thinking-wise, have improved significantly. With every essay read and assignment completed, I learned more about how to create organic ideas rather than pull from those of others. In that way, I have improved a lot as a result of Expos. 

Reflection

At the beginning of this course, I didn’t really think much of peer review and the whole revision process, as all the writing courses I had taken previously tended to overlook the entire process. As the semester progressed, I found myself benefiting greatly from comments made by peers, reverse-outlining, and many other strategies I earned in this class. I often found myself reworking entire paragraphs, leaving nothing but one or two sentences unchanged, or scrapping paragraphs entirely. This led to my essays possessing a more coherent and logical flow, as well as clear sentences and wording (an issue I often found myself losing points over). I also was able to learn to use quotes better, as I tended to use them more purely for information, rather than for supporting my argument and introducing another point of view. I enjoyed the research process overall. At the beginning, I had a clear idea of my topic and where I wanted to take it, however, along the way, I discovered a number of perspectives that complicated my thesis, requiring me to rework my essay to address them. My outlook on the topic also changed as I gathered information and synthesized them together. Originally, I was going to argue that AI was intelligent when it could empathize, however, after reading a number of examples describing emotional emulation, I realized that my definition had to be more specific and complex to reflect the complex nature of the field, and instead shifted over to arguing that an AI is intelligent and alive when it developed an ego or personality. Over the course of this class, I believe my writing has developed favorably, which may help in the future, despite the fact that I’m not going to be doing as much writing in the future as an engineer.

Reflection

As I continue to edit my research paper and reread my previous blog posts, the focus of my paper has somewhat shifted away from simply focusing on how inequality affects communication, and now also looks at how inequality to used to divert responsibility. In the Matt Shepard case, I originally looked at how information was spread after his murder, and did not really analyze the inequality in the case.Rather than taking responsibility for the fact that a hate crime was committed in the town, the media first tried to claim that it was the result of an economic divide between the two sides of the crime, blaming the fact that those from the poorer side of town used Matt as a symbol of their vengeance towards those who were more well off. Similarly, in the pharmaceutical case, the drug companies do not take responsibility for their actions or the side effects their drugs may cause, and instead push the responsibility on the doctors prescribing them. My writing skills have changed over the semester because now when reading a text, I pay closer attention to possible connections, and spend more time analyzing those connections in my writing. In my first essays, it took much more time for me to get to my point in my writing while also connecting pieces, but now, my writing has become more succinct and I focus on getting to my point faster and with more concise language. 

Reflection

I find that my ability to form cohesively progressive arguments has improved greatly. I see that in the beginning of the course that I had all sorts of ideas that I tried to link in some way, which developed very interesting essay topics. However, the way I expressed my ideas and supported them made them seem forced and not as cohesive as they were when I initially thought of them. This has been a problem I've had for a long time, and writing longer essays that require various claims centered on a thesis has helped me learn how to manage my ideas and organize them much better. When I worked on my second draft for my research paper, I found that simply reordering a few paragraphs created a much more logical argument. Going back even further, I remember starting my project with an amazingly wide topic that I had a great interest in, but I had no idea what to write about it. What I learned about narrowing topics allowed me to focus on a niche of my original topic and fully develop an effective argument. Learning how to focus on specific ideas is something I see that separates good essays from great essays, and this should be the next skill I should improve on.

Exposition and Argument Reflection

At the beginning of the year I was an extremely poor writer, still could be, but I feel as if I've improved a bit. Before this class I could not analyze a quote to save my life, but now analysis is much easier for me. Also, I feel as if I am able to make distinctions between two points in a more clear manner than I was capable of before. The majority of these improvements most likely came from the amount of writing and tutoring that I attended. Without the extra support from a tutor I would be completely lost in this class. Furthermore, I believe my reading comprehension has improved and my close-reading skills have become more efficient. At the beginning of the year I had to spend hours close reading the text, it now takes me about half the time to read that it did before (still takes a couple hours though). My view on writing has changed as well. At the beginning of the year I felt I would never be any good at it, and that for me, writing would be a waste of time. However, after practicing I noticed how my skills improved and realized being a decent writer is an important thing in everyday life, especially since I am a business major. I will have to be good at delivering speeches and sending well written emails or proposals depending on which route I choose. Overall, I feel this class has had a positive impact on my future.