Week 7

2/19/14

I found the free-writing assignment today insightful. The question of how we think this project might help us grow really made me reflect. I think it's already an exercise that is making me more relaxed and accepting. Usually with a daunting project such as this, I try to get as much done as soon as possible to relieve anxiety. However, I can't afford to do that this time around, considering the number of exams, assignments, presentations, and family obligations that need tending to this week. While I don't have the time to "get ahead," I also don't have the mental or emotional energy to let myself feel anxious. Even though I don't particularly care for my situation, I think it's teaching me how to deal with tackling things as they come and trusting that everything will work itself out. 

2/21/14

Working on the annotated bibliography this week made me more aware of the formatting for this final essay. At first, I had assumed that our annotated bibliography would be attached to our final essay. This was the case with both of my term papers in high school. Similarly, I had assumed that we would need to use footnotes in our paper because, once again, this had been the case in high school. However, I realize now we don't need to do this with this paper. This is likely because we used Chicago/Turabian style formatting for our social studies papers. Consequently, this will be the first substantial research paper I have written with MLA!

Synthesis 7

            Similar to the theme of last week, re-envisioning, this week’s theme seems to be taking a new perspective. Working on this essay has been a new experience for me. Not so much because it’s a research essay, but because the way in which I’ve constructed it is quite different. With my papers in high school, and most assignments in general, I try to plan ahead and work early on so that I don’t end up stressing at the end. However, given the amount of work I have this week, my family obligations, and the upcoming family weekend, I realized early on that this wouldn’t be a project I could “get ahead” on. At first this was distressing, because everything in me said to fear the thought of writing an 8-page paper in one day, especially when I don’t yet have a highly detailed outline going. However, I also realized that I don’t have the time to be anxious right now. As a result, I’ve begun to look at this assignment from a new perspective. Instead of it being a source of fear because I’m not “getting ahead”, I’ve decided to just tackle the due dates as they come and trust that I will be able to bring it all together as soon as I have the time. My observations about citations also helped me to form this new perspective. While I appreciated the detailed footnotes we used in high school (they make it very clear what parts were others’ ideas and which were my own), I’m glad we don’t need to deal with them now. Writing term papers always took an extremely long time in high school, and so I’d carried that perspective with me to this assignment. This became a negative experience once I realized just how little time I would have to write the first draft. However, I also realized that a significant amount of time was spent adding and formatting the footnotes for those papers. Having realized that there will be no such footnotes on this paper helps me to relax a little bit and supports my more accepting, calm perspective of this paper.