Reflection on Project 3

For this blog post I will reflect on my third project by answering nine items on page 520 in Writing Public Lives.

Manske, Magnus. "Reflection on Lake McDonald (7198413770)". 14 November 2013 via Wikimedia Commons Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic 

What was specifically revised from one draft to another?
The common similarity that was shared throughout all drafts was that I did not need to globally change/revise my papers.  To remind readers of what this means; Global revision is completely changing content from one draft to the next.  The main revisions that took place was fixing grammatical errors, changing sentence structures, and punctuation errors.  Along with these, I had to reword the thesis statements in each of my projects.  I had to connect my main points in my body sections so that readers could see a clearer connection of them to the overall message of the project.  I had to make sure that I correctly cited my resources, which included: visuals and tables (graphs and statistical data).

Point to global changes: how did you reconsider your thesis or organization?
Luckily for me, I never had to make global changes to my projects.  I only had to rewrite my thesis statements in my projects so that I could make them more relative to addressing the components for the entire project.  As far organization goes, I had planned out ways to format my projects prior to writing them.  In the end, I planned out my body sections in topic format.  Essentially, I use one major topic per body paragraph and use evidence and analysis of it to complete each section.  

What led you to these changes?  A reconsideration of audience?  A shift in purpose?
After completing my projects I felt that I did not address the audience as well as I should have.  With the same purposes in mind for each project, I wanted to have better connections between the thesis statements and showing an audience is affected by them.  Major changes were not necessary for my projects.  By adding a sentence to my thesis statements I improved my purpose for projects and gave readers an easier time to grasp the main information of what my projects would be.

How do these changes affect your credibility as an author?
Changing information in my projects for the better made my credibility as an author better.  Adding a sentence alone helped create a bigger picture in the minds of my projects' readers.  I did not change my thesis statements by including more statements that showed my own personal bias towards my topics.  Writing without much use or no use of having bias in one's projects will strengthen their credibility and would give readers more appeal to carefully analyze the work.

How will these changes better address the audience or venue?
Specifically mentioning ways that the audience will be addressed in the thesis statements improves the content of the introduction section to the projects.  By not explicitly mentioning specific individuals in the audience, but carefully using words that mention how the audience will be affected in the thesis statements will address the audience in a better way.

Point to local changes: how did you reconsider sentence structure and style?
The only minor local changes was just fixing some punctuation rules (more specifically in project 2).  My first project did not have too many mistakes when it came to sentence structure and the overall format of the paper.  I should have added more visuals to it to make it more appealing to read.  Information was spot on it, but providing variety (in terms of pictures) would have had readers be more interested in it.  My second project followed the style of the genre better than the first project.  Not too many sentence structure changes were needed in it.  My third project perhaps had the most desirable appeal to the audience in terms of formatting the genre.  Since I did a presentation, I included a good amount visuals which attracted the audiences' eyes right away to them.

How will these changes assist your audience in understanding your purpose?
The best example to answer to this question would have to be my third project.  Just after I had provided my thesis statement, I added to slides that briefly described how vaccinations worked.  This is an important addition to my project since it gives unbiased and informative commentary to the overall public argument.  Giving factual information can help assist the audience into reading more of the work and then in the end decide their own opinions.

Did you have to reconsider the conventions of the particular genre in which you are writing?
The only issue that I had with conventions was with the first project.  I did not write my project in true quick reference guide convention.  Although I separated out specific topic headers in my project, I did not make it more appealing to the reader by providing visuals and images to make it easier on the eye.  Since my other projects followed the conventions of their genres pretty well, I did not have reconsider rewriting them.

Finally, how does the process of reflection help you reconsider your identity as a writer?
Reviewing my own writing tells a lot about how I plan and prepare my own projects.  Since I did procrastinate until the last hour to write my projects, I still used the same type of writer style from the beginning of this course.  Reflecting on my writing gives me a better sense of how I write similar projects in a better way, addressing the key components of my prompts.  Practice makes perfect is a saying that I believe is important when it comes to writing.  The more you write the better writer you will become.  Revising is an important process when it comes to growing as a writer.