Reflection on Project 1

Paragon. "Self Reflection" 8/15/2009 via flickr.
Attribution 2.0 Generic License.

This post is a reflection on five-week project we have all been painstakingly working on every Saturday night.

• My biggest challenge was the sheer amount of time it took me to do all the work. I dealt with this by telling myself I would have to do it all anyway, so right now is when I should. Apart from that, I went on a 3:00 am walk to clear my head, broke up the working time with other things, like gardening, video games, etc. Also, I had trouble keeping track of everything I had stated in different sections of the QRG, and I had to just read them all several times to see what I was about to repeat.
• Every week, my biggest success was being finished with the work. I got the work done by buckling down and doing it. 
• Definitely the more logical, straight-forward and analytical choices worked well in this project. After all, being analytical was the point of the project. Along that same idea, being concise and specific was definitely the way to go.
• I felt that, as I was writing, I kept wanting to object to one of the side's arguments, but I knew that that would show a whole lot of bias on my part, and I just felt... dirty, as if I were trying to cheat at convincing people of my view in a place where I'm only supposed to be explaining. That definitely would have been bad.
• This process was similar to school writing I've done in the past in that it had us do similar things, like analysis, and research, and a huge quantity of actual writing.
• It was different in that I've always just had a few big essays, rather than tons of little assignments focused on specific topics at a time. Also, I've never been on a blog, even outside of class.
• These skills probably aren't too applicable across my coursework, just because this class is the outlier in my schedule. Most of my classes are technical mathematics and science classes, though it did help me learn about researching topics, which I will likely need to do later in life.

Reflection

I read Tom's and Ann's blogs, and after doing so, I realized that I probably didn't give enough credit to what skills will be applicable to further coursework. Firstly, Ann's post made me realize that I got the opportunity to learn more about my major, which I would have had to do anyway, at the same time as doing English homework. Also, I now know about my major-specific citation style. Not to mention, as Tom pointed out in his blog, time management will be a huge skill that I'll probably use for the rest of my life.