Researching my formal report
The process of researching for my formal report draft taught me a lot about how much information has been recorded on my subject area and gave me a sense of specific questions I should be asking, that I wasn’t yet. These questions include: 1) what does UBC’s financial budget infrastructure look like, 2) who is really in charge of handling the financial decisions, and 3) what are the consequences of the proposals I’m suggesting. Additionally, during my research, I found a lot of primary sources that allowed me to not only substantiate my claims but also to get a deeper insight into what arguments have been made against my claims. This includes opinion articles on topics related to financial aid but not necessarily related to Canada or UBC (e.g. opinion articles on US FASFA system, financial aid in private universities abroad) and also data sources that speak to the affects of financial aid on post-secondary education (e.g. research articles). The research component of this report was definitely a crucial step in my ability to organize and formally structure the argument of my report.
Organizing my formal report
After having done extensive research on my topic area and possible counter-arguments that go against it, organizing the report became a bit easier because I had a clear vision of what I wanted to say and how I’d use factual (primary or secondary) evidence to substantiate my claims. Also, since I had the opportunity to create an outline of my draft, I also had a initial vision of what to include in my report and what I later found became redundant to have as different headings or paragraphs in the report, which allowed me to further condense the initial draft of my outline. Organizing my report mostly came from the data and evidence I had, since I based my report on.
Writing my formal report
After having systematically researched and organized the structure of the report, the writing process became fairly straightforward and efficient. Since the chunk of the ideas and arguments were already nailed down and substantiated with evidence I found, the writing process became a matter of convincing the audience of the message my report had to say, which was essentially 1) the demand and necessity for financial aid for domestic Arts undergraduates at UBC and 2) how will this have an impact in their university careers. Through this process I learned that the main ideas and arguments must always come before the writing process, mainly to make it easier on the writer and to ensure that the writing will be clearer and more straightforward for the audience. While editing and peer reviewing is a process that can improve the argument of these ideas in writing, I learned that writing a report should always begin with a the brainstorming analysis first.
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