I struggled more than I thought I would with this assignment. It seemed like a relatively straightforward task. However, I was challenged by thinking about historiography in multiple ways and then writing about it in a non-technical format. Having to think about the intricacies of a term that I had never really considered before actually confused my understanding, and I started to overthink. I realised that I had to take a step back and come back to my writing with a clear mind; luckily, this did the trick. One part of my assignment that I am rather proud of is my visual aid. I could not find a visual about historiography that I thought was appropriate, so I created my own. I used the website Canva and was able to quickly make a visual that I think helped readers better understand. I found the process quite interesting as I was challenged to make a concept into a visual aid.
I have always found peer reviews a little daunting but years of practice must have paid off as I felt relatively comfortable reviewing Peter’s work. I think Peter did an excellent job defining the Medulla Oblongata, as I could easily understand what it was and its function. Going over Peter’s work helped me further understand the assignment and where I went wrong myself, which helped me when editing my work. Correcting my classmate’s grammar was a good exercise for me, allowing me to work on my own grammatical skills. I was a little worried about giving criticism as I did not want to upset anyone. But, I think the textbook gave some excellent guidance on balancing the constrictive criticism by reiterating the positive.
Ethan offered me some great advice in his peer review. A significant issue for me was my grammar and sentence structure. I was not surprised by this as I have always struggled with grammar. Ethan pointed out that I had a run-on sentence that needed correcting. I have often struggled with run-on sentences. I moved schools a lot, so there are gaps in my knowledge, one of them being run-on sentences. I did not even know what a run-on sentence was until someone pointed it out last year. Since then, I have been trying to avoid them, but I am still learning. Ethan suggested I review my word choice as some of it was ambiguous, I edited the example he suggested but struggled to see any other ambiguous word choices. Another suggestion of Ethan’s was to add another example, preferably one more recent. I decided to write about the current situation between Russia and Ukraine, my thought process being that seeing as people are witnessing the event unfold, they might better be able to understand how historiography works.