Unit three was one of the most important pieces in creating the formal report. The research process was a challenge to find pieces of writing and relate them and use them as support for my proposal. Especially when discussing such a specific location and topic, there is little information on exactly what you are talking about. The cost of streetlights was not an exact or straightforward answer. It required multiple different websites to gather all the necessary information to determine the cost estimate of installing streetlights along a given stretch of road. Although this was a challenge, it allowed me to use the skills I have learned for researching and apply them to a real-world problem. Another section of research that was interesting was searching for the accidents that had been recorded along Southwest and Northwest Marine Drive. It was sad to hear about the number of deaths, but it also allowed me to use this information and data to support my proposal. Additionally, reading forums and investigating news articles helped me to further feel passion about this topic as there were many citizens that have been addressing and emphasizing the need for streetlights.
Organizing all the collected information was also a challenge. With past peer reviews, I noticed that I was often quite lost in their writing as I was unfamiliar with the topics and with this, I used their errors to help my own writing. I tried to be clear and concise about what I was discussing, where streetlights would be installed and what the issue is. Although the paper is being addressed to someone familiar with the given area and the topic, it is also important for the community or those unfamiliar, to be able to easily follow along.
The process of writing my formal report draft was challenging. I found that I had very little survey responses to give me enough information to support the arguments I was making. I also found that there were a lot of bias as many people who completed the survey were not UBC students or were unfamiliar with the area being discussed. I found that some responses were not true to the area or applied to some respondents so there were some made up answers.
The peer review process was very helpful to my own draft. Critiquing other peers work and especially when looking for sentences in the past tense made me rethink my own writing. I noticed that my peer review had a lot of errors which were like my own and only I noticed them because they were someone else’s writing.
Overall, unit three was a very useful experience and filled with exercises to better my own writing. To be able to analyze grammar, organization, the use of graphics and the creativity aspects of another piece of writing allowed me to see the same errors in my own and be able to critique from an outsiders point of view.