Writing the first draft of my formal report during a busy time in my life was a challenge. With my family moving homes, it was important for me to really organize my time to ensure that deadlines were continuing to be met. Collecting the data for my two surveys was fairly simple once I received approval from Dr. Paterson as it was just a matter of distributing over social media and email. However, once my surveys closed, a large challenge I faced with composing the draft was creating the graphs and figures from the data that was received. With so many key questions being asked, it was a struggle to not only create the appropriate graphics but to also decide on which were to be excluded from the report. As a psychology student, it was also an adjustment writing a full report in MLA and following the textbook’s guidelines, as I am so used to composing papers in APA format. It was important that I paid close attention to detail and changed the way I approached this assignment as it does not follow my “everyday university paper”.
Reviewing Christina’s report was a pleasure. I really enjoyed reading her report on overcoming the pandemic and socially distancing within her workplace. Because this assignment is such a large portion of our grades in this class, I really wanted to make sure that I was providing her with the best peer review that I could so that she would be able to improve her paper as much as possible. She provided an excellent review for me as well, and I wanted to return the courtesy. While peer-reviewing her draft, I tried to break it down by section as much as I could, providing both the positives and areas of improvement of her draft. Multiple passes of her report were needed for me to provide a proper review, as I wanted to be sure not to exclude anything important. While peer-reviewing takes time and can be tedious, it is a necessity for assignments such as these.
I think while finalizing my own report, I can indirectly learn from Christina; she has a very direct and concise writing style which helps keep her report within target length and this is something I am going to need to focus on achieving. Right now, my report sits at 21 pages, but with Christina’s suggestions, I am sure I will be able to achieve a page count closer to the target length while still maintaining quality within my report.
I look forward to completing my last few assignments for this course, but I know there is some more hard work ahead of me this upcoming week!