In the third unit, we learned how to write with a “You” attitude which focuses on the reader and making them feel that they are important, appreciated, and valued. Through this, we were able to practice this writing style through the memo to Evan and peer review. I felt that these two assignments gave me a bit more confidence before writing my Formal Report because it really put me in the right frame of mind on how to begin writing and how to approach my research project.
A few weeks ago, I started to write up my prompts for gathering data from people I wanted to interview. I had to be polite and clear with what my intentions are, and being as unbiased as possible when obtaining the data. I interviewed five people who were all very insightful and had a lot to say about what training practices worked well. The interviews felt more like a conversation between student leaders who are both passionate about campus involvement, which allowed for very in-depth answers. I was able to gather a lot more information this way and support their thoughts with secondary sources that made the report more complete. As for the surveys done by volunteers, I felt it was important to have their perspective and to give them a voice which may represent what future volunteers would like from training as well. They were also given the opportunity to voice what improvements they would like to see in the future which I took from their responses in coming up with a solution that is will hopefully benefit them and future volunteers in the years to come.
Organizing my report was stressful for me because as a Science student, I’m used to reading papers that had a very definite format that followed: Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion. However, this report broke that mold for me and I had to come up with a format that suited my topic. I found this stressful at first but I ended up enjoying it more because it allowed for more creativity, thinking about which pieces of writing would fit better with each other. The textbook gave a really good example in writing a formal report outline that I used to model my own outline. Having an outline to work with made organizing my thoughts while writing the paper a lot more easier. Though, something I found interesting was that my initial outline greatly changed as I started to write my report. Some sections I found had too much content and then I had to adjust my outline making new sections and subsections. Conversely, I found that at times I didn’t have enough material for a particular section and so the outline also served as a guide of what I needed to accomplish, whether it be expanding on my own thoughts, or gathering more resources to support my arguments.
One thing that is stressed about writing scientific papers is turning the research into a story. I wanted to accomplish something similar while I was writing this report, aiming for a logical flow to this story. Generally, I wanted to describe the current state of the problem, then propose a solution based on primary and secondary sources, and close it with a call to action. In terms of consistently writing with “You” attitude, it’s definitely a challenge to write with that style because it’s something that I’ve recently learned and it’s not automatic yet, so while writing the report I was actively thinking about that. I also tried to write as best as I could according to the schedule I had for myself. This allowed me to look back on my work at a later date to still see if the report is cohesive with what I wrote previously. Writing like that allowed me to edit my work with a new mindset each time, so what might have made sense the previous day at times were edited heavily the next day.
Lastly, reviewing Carmen’s work much like reviewing Yuta’s proposal earlier in the term was very insightful. I thought her work brings up a need for financial literacy, especially in a digital age where money can be transferred easily and it can be hard to track where money comes in and out. That said, I was very interested in her report while I was peer reviewing it and after reading her report I wanted to look back at my report and see if the comments and suggestions that I made on her work could be applied to mine. I’ve been keeping in mind what my report would sound like to someone reviewing and being more critical of my work. Despite this there are things that I’ll miss and so having another set of eyes reviewing your work is so beneficial to improving your writing because while something might sound clear to you, might not be clear to another person.
Overall, this was a very challenging unit in terms of writing with the “You” attitude and going out to conduct research, interpreting the data, and compiling it into a report in a limited amount of time especially with exams coming up. But the prep work before the report like the outline, schedule, writing with “You” assignments made the research and report writing much more manageable.
