For this exercise, I am doing something similar to a past post. Remember Dave? Well he's back to ask more questions, but this time, it is about the five week research process that I have gone through in my English Comp class while using the book Curious Researcher. Since the revision and editing of my paper is done, I felt it would be a good idea to reflect on the new writing process that we learned. For this post, I will be answering Dave's questions by using a technique called fastwriting, which was mentioned in a previous post, but to recall your memory, it is just taking a few minutes and writing whatever comes to mind as an answer. Here are the questions and my responses to them:
1. Dave: "Hey you, I think you can't really say that one opinion is better than another one. Do you agree?"
Me: I agree with you that one opinion isn't better than another; however, I feel that what makes some people think opinions are better than others is the supporting evidence. In this paper, I was supposed to give a proposal on what to do about my topic. For instance, I wrote to small town police departments saying that K-9 units are beneficial to their agencies. If my stance on this topic is strong enough, then these departments should go about following my advice based on my own personal opinion. The research that I collected was supposed to help back up my "argument" for incorporating these canines into the agencies, and by using other sources, I am able to add to my credibility.
2. Dave: "There's all this stuff in the book about research as a process of discovery. What did you discover?"
Me: Throughout this researching process, I have discovered new ways to go about actually finding credible sources and then to incorporate them into my essay by using double journal entries, which helped me keep a list of direct quotations and my commentary on them. This was a very useful tool because it allowed me to break the research process up into smaller steps and then I used those two strategies in order to complete the research needed for the paper.
3. Dave: "What do you figure was the most challenging problem you had to solve while working on this research project? How did you solve it?"
Me: The most challenging thing for me was using some of the templates in Curious Researcher because I felt like I couldn't think the way the template wanted me to. When I thought of something, I felt that it didn't coexist with the template, so I struggled with trying to make it fit. Though I struggled, I found that templates are a good strategy because even though they are written one way, they aren't set in stone. I found that they could be manipulated so that my writing would fit in the template and I didn't need to stress over trying to change my words so they fit within the template perfectly. Writing is special in that it can be changed, so if you feel stuck, you can try and manipulate the templates so they can better suit you.
4. Dave: "After all this work, what did you take away from this experience? What have you learned that you can use?
Me: I thought this five week research process was very helpful in getting my essay done in a timely manner, even though the process was time consuming. I found it very helpful in that it broke down the entire paper into very small chunks that were manageable and allowed me to be less worried about the actual paper and more focused on the task at hand. I will definitely use parts of this process when necessary, such as splitting the paper up into small steps so I am less concerned about the entirety of the paper, and I am also planning on using some of the templates if they fit the criteria. those templates were helpful in determining what I actually needed to have in my paper for some sections and gave me different options, which I also liked so I had variety. I will most likely use the CRAAP analyses the most in order to determine the credibility of sources that I will definitely need for future projects.
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