Chad A. Stonehocker

English 2010

Dina Wecker

April 20, 2012

Final Reflection

The project that we worked on throughout the class was on Alzheimer’s, the disease and non profit organizations that deal with the issues around the disease.  Overall as I thought about the best way to approach each of the papers for the topic I chose, I tried to make it as light hearted as the topic allowed.  I completed the following items for this class. (Located to the right)

·      Report on Alzheimer’s

·      Position/Proposal

·      Review

·      Advertising Assignment – Pamphlet

·      Midterm and Final Reflection

·      Community Writing Project Packet

As we completed and did peer reviews on our assignments, I found that in the beginning of the course most of the suggestions I was receiving from the other members of the class had to do with organization of my work in the papers this was especially true of my first Report.  I took this information and corrected the papers I had completed to have a better flow for the reader and kept this in mind as I worked on papers that followed those reviews.  The peer reviews on my position / proposal paper had more to do with my visual elements and some more on the organization on the content of my paper, it wasn’t as extensive as the comments on the first paper so it was easier to correct.  When I completed my review the only criticism that I got back from the reviews were the images that I used did not seem to be pronounced enough, I corrected this by increasing the size of the visuals.  The advertising project was a colorful and well thought out piece that got good feedback, and the final Writing Project generated a lot of discussion I class and having done the research for the presentation made the dialogue easy to have an energetic and positive dialogue.

When I performed peer reviews for my classmates I saw some great work and some work that appeared to be done in not enough time.  My overall assessment for my peers was that they needed to think through their papers and come up with a clear opening, explain their position, and then write a firm conclusion that enforced their standpoint from their position of their papers; many seemed to start out ok and loose focus or have no definitive conclusion.

My take from the course syllabus and discussions I class left me somewhat unprepared for the final presentation since I felt it was mostly one new paper that had a general outline of your social issue and then piecing together the work from the group that was done though the course.  As my group worked on our final in discussion it turned into quite a bit more work as we went forward than I had anticipated which meant that I took more upon myself since I felt that I had put my group behind by not fully comprehending the amount still needed to complete for the presentation.  My group and I communicated very well and did new divisions of work near the end of the class to more effectively complete the final project.  James took on finishing two pieces so that I could piece together the PowerPoint and take care of the visual elements for the presentation.

When it came time to write all of the content for the presentation I created a basic outline of where I wanted to start my audience then the content that I wanted to show them to become familiar with the topic and then lastly, to conclude it with the statement of now that we know what we’re dealing with, here is what we can do about it.

As I found when I was contemplating the work I had done up to the mid-term point of the class all the way through the end of the course, I would have picked a different topic that was not so difficult to write for.  However in reflection it made my group think outside the box to come up with an angle that worked throughout the course through completion.  If I had it all to do over again I would have definitely picked a different topic even though it probably made my writing better for all the consideration I had to put forth to complete the work.