There were two major assignments for this unit, the first draft of the proposal along with a peer review of that proposal. The majority of this unit was dedicated to the first draft of the formal report, a process that turned out be more intensive than I had originally anticipated. The topic for my proposal is one that I have both a personal connection to and a strong academic and professional interest in.
The challenge arose from the data required for this report, both in the collection and the proper distribution of this data. The difficulty of data collection was more difficult than anticipated, as the majority of the research that I have done to date has not required primary research and data collection to be performed. I decided that the best way to gather information was by performing voluntary questionnaires outside of a local grocery story. The issue with this method was that when I approached people the most frequent response was a polite decline to participate. This meant that I was unable to get as many responses as I would have liked and required much more time to get the data that I was looking for. This was a very eye opening experience for me to the labor-intensive nature work that is required for data collection.
Due to the high volume of assignments and questions, I had not received approval and comments on my proposal until a later date and therefore received an extension for the draft of my report. Other members in my group were in a similar situation and therefore the peer review has also been extended and I have not done or received my review before this reflection was done. I am looking forward to this review, as every time that we have had a peer review I have been able to improve on two important skills. The first is improving in my abilities as a reviewer and providing constructive and concrete comments to help their writing and with this has come a greater ability to receive comments and edits suggested by reviewers in order to improve my own work.