At the beginning of the course, I personally felt that I had more strengths as a writer but

not as many as a researcher. For instance, I had a decent skill set when it came to organizing

ideas and incorporating information into a single text but the way I gathered information in the

first place was not as mindful for things like source validity, ethics, and incorporating different

perspectives. Starting off with a introduction to ethics really helped with the idea of specifying

my research to develop an argument that incorporates all voices from a lot of different contexts.

Relating ethics to civic discourse revealed how crucial it was as a researcher and writer to

navigate controversial topics and approach it in a way that was open minded to identities and

viewpoints.

Before the course, there was never any deep consideration into relating my own personal

identities or characteristics in the way that the strategic reflection did. Thinking about what my

interests, preferences, and personality traits provided me with a guideline moving forward

concerning what were the most efficient ways that I researched. To clarify, factors such as an

environment that a writer or researcher works in majorly affects the efficiency and also the

output of the work that is created. Additionally, addressing my learning style--which was

visually--really came into play during the researching and synthesizing stages as I had to

organize the vast amount of information available to me and the information that I gathered.

Thus, being mindful and learning about myself at the beginning of the course in terms of who I

was as a writer or researcher in a way provided a blueprint on how to proceed with researching

and writing.

During the actual research stage, I felt that I had developed more skill in terms of

analyzing what is relevant, and figuring out the validity of a source. Finding where to obtain
sources and learning about the trade offs that come with sources whether primary or secondary

provided to be useful in determining what was best suited for my topic. One of the most

important takeaways was that easy accessibility such as something from a google search did not

necessarily equate to the same quality or validity from a source buried in a database. After being

more mindful of these factors, the researching process was a lot more cautious for me and I

learned to be more conscientious about where I get my information.

The most challenging part of the course was trying to organize the massive amount of

information that had been gathered in the research stage into a coherent essay. But as learned

from the strategic reflection, I knew that visually organizing my information would prove to be

most effective to me as a writer. Accordingly, I used things like color coding and diagrams to

connect ideas, and even find similar perspectives. When approaching a controversial topic such

as my own, I had to organize the different perspectives in an effective way that did not

necessarily hide information to prove a point. This idea of equally representing perspectives was

something new that I considered as a writer from this course because of the emphasis on civic

discourse. Synthesizing all of the information in a non-essay form was a way I found to express

certain points in different ways which varies in effectiveness based on the audience. Ultimately,

converting my research into writing was definitely a skill I had improved on throughout the

course as I learned to be more mindful when conveying a point.

After the course, I definitely feel more cautious and conscious of my research and

writing. A lot of different methods and factors to consider when progressing as a writer and

researcher have become more apparent to me. There is a lot of depth to the process that I had not
considered before, and moving forward I will consider a lot more factors when writing and

researching.