english 106i
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Friday, October 31, 2003
this project was the most bad experience in writing i had. I didn't take my time on working on the writing because i couldn't find deacent resources for it. that made me worry alot about it. it came in a bad time because i had exams at that time and it needed a lot of work. I tryed my best considering the conditions I did the project in. Dispite all of that i liked the idea of the project very much, to me it's a new style of writing. And I learned something from this experiance, in the next project I will change the sub topic once i get stuck in a process of the work. I already have a few ideas about the interview.
Thursday, October 30, 2003
This project required a lot of time as there was a lot of research to do. We had to find three good artciles which we could compare. One of the article had to be from the library. I found it very difficult to find the article from the library
Comparing these articles was a totally different experiance. I had never compared articles in the past. I feel the outline really made things easier and more organised in this project. Now im looking forward to the next project. I have already thought of a person i am going to interveiw.
This was definitely one of the more harder projects. No project is easy but this one was definitely hard.
It required me to do a lot of research initially to find three good articles, including one library based article. Then we had to read all three articles and find out similar or dissimilar perspectives of the authors.
I really enjoyed that part, because it got me into thinking about what each author wanted his reader to understand. Because even though three writers may writer about the same articles, they all have original perspectives that they want to share with the readers. And since i was the common reader to all their three articles, i could compare their three perspectives easily. I could tell what i thought they were trying to convey.
I liked this project and found it interesting. I look forward to the interview.
I had really hard time with this project. Once I had a topic and i could not find right articles online and library, so i changed it at the very late time. For that reason i was late for every draft. The hardest part for this project was finding good articles online and offline. also it was the first time me to find sources in the library, so I had a tough time to redearch the sources. While i was writing a draft, i was confused what I am comparing or contrasting. Since all of my articles had very similar main ideas, i did not know what to compare and contrast. I missed one class that is supposed me to have conference with my teacher, and it was very big disadantage for me. Since we have done every project with a same topic and we have to follow that topic for rest of the projects, it is getting hard me to think of new aspects of the topic. I hope I did OK for this project, and i will try to give more efforts on the next project.
This project has been the most challenging one so far. At first, finding articles to compare and contrast was a difficult job. I was not able to find articles that addressed my topic directly, I began searching for articles and books related to my topic. The library assignment helped me search for books in the libraries. I was able to find two books. I managed to get an article from the internet which spoke of my topic in general.
Once the sources were ready, I began reading them and sorting the main ideas. This took me a lot of time since the books were volumnous and I had to read most of it to understand the author's perspective. At first I made a tabular column listing all the important ideas in each of the three sources and compared them. This table helped me in a great way to write start writing my essay.
As I began writing my second draft, I found it hard to compare and contrast ideas from all three articles at the same time . I lost focus and began concentrating more on comparing the writing styles rather than the main ideas. The peer evaluation helped me improve my essay. I identified my weaknesses. I had to reorganize my essay and add new ideas. I began to think from the readers perspective which helped me come up with different ideas.
I missed my second conference and an appointment at the online writing lab since I was sick. I strongly feel that the visit to the writing lab and the second conference would have helped me a lot. In my opinion, the conference and the peer evaluation helped me come up with better ideas.
I rectified my errors in the third draft. By now my project was taking shape. Since this topic was highly debatable, I had to draw conclusions after comparing the ideas of the authors of the texts. It turned out to be a true research project.
This project was a true eye opener. I learnt about the different perspectives of authors on this topic. It was interesting to learn many new things. I spent a lot of time reading articles and books and it was worth it.
Iam glad that i have finished this project which, according to me, has been the most challenging and interesting one.
I think this project is the worst project I have ever had because when it was the time for me to do the first draft, I had a CS project. When it came to the second and third draft, I had CS exam. So I almost haven’Äôt done a thing other than search for three articles. To find these three articles was also pretty difficult for me. But using Purdue Library really helped me a lot although it’Äôs a little bit hard to use it at first. After I found all three articles, I had to compare and contrast them. It’Äôs hard for me to find ideas that can be compared and contrasted. But from the conference, I knew how to compare and contrast the ideas from the articles. But after I knew how to compare and contrast it, I found out that there is one article that I should change because it didn’Äôt suitable to the other two articles. So I had to find another one. I spent so many hours only to find three articles.
I also went to the writing lab and they helped me in organizing the ideas and how to write quotes and references. But I got confused with making quotes and references because first, the APA manual is so complicated. It’Äôs hard for me to find the right format for my paper based on my articles. Second, I was given the MLA format for my paper. I was really confused. Which one that I should use. I just hope that I could finish my paper on time and it follows all the rules in the grading criteria.
The bulky part of the project was finding the articles. I spent a couple of days lurking around the libraries in search for good articles, in addition to spending a very long time on the internet just for articles. It paid off though; the articles I had found were rich and lengthy. Although this was the bulky part of the project, it took me a while too to decide which main ideas I will be writing about. And since the articles I had found were very long, there were lots of details I had to strip out. I took me a while before deciding which points to include. Frankly, I did not enjoy this part of the project at all, and the underlying meaning of the points I had found did not sound coherent. However, when I started writing my paper, everything became easy and it all made more sense to me. Blending the main points I had while comparing and contrast them produced a very coherent paper; it made a lot of sense and I pretty much liked that. Frankly, I learned lots from my paper. Specifically, things that I have heard about my topic were very incorrect; the information I found sounded like an exaggeration of what I knew. However, it made a lot of sense.
I thought that writing the paper was easy. After I had my information it was easy to articulate these points in my words while comparing and contrasting them. I did not use the book for help on comparing and contrasting because I believe that following a certain format will result in a bad outcome. If one can abide to the paper type by heart, instead of looking at a paper showing his format, then his/her paper will be much better. Because of that, I think I have a will organized and coherent piece of writing with no grammar mistakes. Therefore, if I still had more time I would not be working much on it.
Throughout this project, I had a hard time trying to think of the ideas to comapre and contrast. After reading all the articles I found, I couldn't manage to find the similarity or the difference about articles. For my topic, many researchers have their own perception. It is very hard to find things to compare between 2 articles. Moreover, most articles I found already compare things in their own article. So, I find that it is kind of confusing when I am trying to write a sumarry. I tend to understand what the author is trying to explain rather than trying to find any similarity or differences among the articles. But after I did an outline of all my articles I started to see a better picture about what all these articles are trying to tell us. On top of that, I manage to summarize the whole article just by doing the outline. Therfore, I find that preparing an outline is very important when trying to summarize an article. During the conference, I manage to learn that I can state my personal opinion regarding the articles. THis is very helpful and I manage to share some thoughts. But, I also learned that if I share the same thoughts I have to quote it. The biggest weakness I had throughout this project is to find the article. I think I should gather the question first before looking for articles. I should think about what kind of question I need to find not the information I wish to gather before doing the summary. Last but not least, I hope that I did a good job on my research and I wish to find more things regarding my topic if time allows that.
Wednesday, October 29, 2003
This project has been hard-work. It was truly hard to find articles in the library or elsewhere that related to my topic. I was forced to use news articles and even a book to review and summarize for the project. My first draft, outline and second draft, weren't very good, I'd hastily thrown them together, because it was truly tough to come up with good ideas for the contrast and summary. A good idea in one article sometimes didn't have a complementary opinion on the same area in the other two. So, it was more or less a long search for good things to write about. My third draft was very similar to my second one, with very few changes. At the conference, I discovered that my problem was in organizing the information, so everything would make a convey its message better. My final draft, that I've just about completed, is almost a complete makeover of the previous draft, I've had to shift things around, delete paragraphs, and create totally new ones. This project however, has provided a lot of useful information for my research. I have an idea of the questions ?I might ask, but I still need to develop that idea. Well, that's it, and its great to have my project finally completed (almost!!).
At first I think this project is very difficult. The most difficult thing is to find good articles or books because this is new to me; I am not familiar with Purdue’Äôs libraries and the books are not in one place. Then I have to read the articles and book carefully over and over again to find out what in common and what is different about the ideas to make a table of comparison and contrast. The next step is to make an outline with all the main points of the articles and book; think about the introduction and conclusion as well a short conclusion at the end of each idea that I will compare and contrasted. At last the outline was really helpful because it gave me a whole picture what I will write in my paper. The textbook (black book) is not actually helpful right now; I got lost in its details because I want specific guideline for my references but I’Äôm sure that it will be very useful for later after I get used to it. The conference help me with this aspect. Again, to me, time is not a problem because the teacher led us step by step; we don’Äôt have to do all steps at the same time. I already took a chance to ask the teacher in the class and in my conference time. I don’Äôt have any question right now; maybe later, I hope.
My strength is that I chose a scientific topic and it is common. Besides that I have knowledge about it therefore it help me understand the articles and book better and save me time to find out what in common and what is different. Although I still spent a lot of time on prepare and writing this paper but I am happy with it because it will help me to write a research paper in my biology class about ’ÄúEnzyme Regulation and Allosteric’Äù dues in two weeks; now I know very much what I should do.
This compare/contrast project is the hardest so far in my opinion, I couldn't get every single draft of this project done early enough to save myself enough time to sleep. Tomorrow will be the due date of this project, but I still got a lot of work to do: First of all, I can't find lots of things to compare or contrast other than "facts." Secondly, the APA stuff is so complicated, I didn't pay much attention about this because I wanted to focus on the ideas I squeezed out of my brain. So tonight will be a tough night with the manual. Last but not least, as I review the writing I got so far, I think I kind of lost the concentration on what I wanted to find out. Instead, I put some summary of each article I found. No good, got to revise, yet again! To be honest, I feel like I am doing the worst papaer I have ever write being a college level student, I hope things can change when I have my final draft done tonight.
