Blog #16
The most helpful assignment to date that we did was a combination of the “annotated bibs” and “critically reading” the articles. This assignment really helped me because i had no clue as to finding research articles on a database. It was really hard at first trying to find articles that related to my topic. When i began to simplify my topics then more and more articles began to stand out as references that i could use. Once i got the articles, annotating them was a bit challenging due to me having to summarize entire articles, but all the time i put into summarizing and extracting the relevant points paid off in the long run. When i went to do my literature review i was able to (in my belief) cohesively put the articles into order by how similar they spoke to one another.
There were many points where feedback had impacted my next moves. The first major change i made was from writing the 15 page academic journal style paper to crafting a 40+ page novella. I was sitting in class and a student asked me about the inspiration for my topic and i thought about my life, and especially my mother. I knew that the only way to have an impact on the persons reading my research i would have to tell my story, along with some others from personal interviews that i would later collect. This was the point where i realized fully what i wanted my paper to look like. The second inspiration came from a friend whom had read my story when it was at about 35 pages. She began to cry at points as well as laugh hysterically at others. She would text me after she read something that was interesting to her to let me know what she was feeling. This greatly inspired me to keep writing because here was someone appreciating my work–the story of my life. She urged me to keep adding to the story because she didn’t want to put it down, so u continued to email her additions to the story.
The most difficult part to this writing process came in two forms. Physically this assignment drained me. There was so much work on top of assignments for other classes. This hindered my writing in all aspects of the paper (literature review, introduction, methods, etc.) The second difficulty came emotionally for me. Throughout the story, i found myself including many stories from my personal life which was painful. To go back into a day where basically everything went wrong, where i was in my lowest state mentally and emotionally ate at me. I am an independant person and writing about the past made me feel helpless and vulnerable, i was back in my early years again. These feelings put a stop to my writing for a good week and a half. I finally start writing again after inspiration came from various friends whom liked my story–i began to write for them.
My whole paper shows my ability as a writer. Before this process, i never went into great depth with writing, such as researching information and combining various references to build up my argument. Being able to follow the styles of APA by including appropriate formatting and citations (in-text as well), i was able to elevate my writing to fit that in an academic community. Personally for me, the story that i had shaped was my personal accomplishment as a writer. To take an idea and expand on it for as many pages as i did, it was remarkable. I was able, through my writing to influence the emotions of readers from the highest point of happiness to the lowest point of sorrow. Something that i find very uplifting is that i, really for the first time, was able to go through an emotional storm due to writing for something academically. Usually, we as student writers, we just write to get the assignment done, never really taking the time to be influenced and listen to what our words are saying. With this assignment, it showed me kindness and it knocked me on my ass and for that, i am grateful.
