When I began drafting, the first thing I had to do, like so many others, was come up with an idea. Once I had an idea, I could roll with it. And when I say roll with it, I really do mean just that. I try to take it all over the place. Take it any possible direction it could go. That way I knew that when I decided the specific direction to take it, it was the best option. After I found my specific direction is when I began actually drafting and writing for this project.
My process began very slowly. It took me a little while to realize how we were supposed to go about doing this, and once I found that out it may have caused even more of a problem. My community was a community of observers. Who is that? And where are they? What makes them what people think of them as? None of these really had solid definite answers. I’ve known people and do know people who are observant but I would not say they would describe that as one of their main roles. So I had to start from scratch. I went around and asked people what comes to mind when they think of an observant person, and the questions actually came back with some excellent feedback. Several genuine stereotypes were brought about and that was just what I needed. The only problem being, I still did not have other individuals within this community to specifically, rather than broadly, compare myself to. This problem actually played a part in how my final draft and presentation came about too. I know there are people out there that, like myself, classify themselves under an observant role in life, but personally I did not know any. As a result of, I could not talk of any personal experiences of others in my essay which is what it called for. So I decided to leave it out as a whole.
Once I had my information for my essay I just let it all out. I wrote, and wrote, and wrote. I redrafted and corrected mistakes and had others do the same. I asked for input by those people closest to me to make sure it related to what I was actually about. Soon enough, I had finished a final rough draft and could go from there.
Some things worked well for me in the process, others, not so much. I definitely struggle in a way to apply my role into stereotypical examples within the community due to the fact that I had no personal experiences with anyone aside from myself. Though I also think I went about finding correct stereotype of an observant people by asking random people what their first thought was of someone of that sort. My redrafting and changing the sentence structure and flow also worked well.
In this essay I believe I related my own personal experiences well to the stereotypes of an observant person. I gave reasons for why I did or did not fit the stereotypes and believe I made it relatively clear as to why that was.
In the essay, like I said before, there are parts I believe I could have done better such as writing of the observant community as a whole. I had no basis to go from so there are no specific examples of an action of people in the community in comparison to my own in the paper. Simply just myself compared to stereotypes.
Most in-class assignments and homework seemed to work well for me. Everything kept me on task and allowed me to keep up and practice my writing skills constantly.
One aspect of my writing skills that I struggle with is peer-reviewing others papers. If someone’s paper is awful, then I can help. But it is those in-between good and great that I struggle with finding a way to help. One writing skill that I have become comfortable with so far is staying on task and keeping up so that I never have to just spit something out. I can always write when I am in a writing mood.
