Final Reflection

Before coming enrolling in this class, I considered myself a good researcher when it came to finding and breaking down sources to use them in projects. I was surprised to realize that I wasn’t going deep enough into the actual meanings of my sources and so I was missing some crucial details. Learning about the writer’s project and then learning how to find it helped me tremendously to better evaluate sources. I was able to read a little bit of each source, then I was able to find the writer’s project and then I would determine if it was useful or not. Initially it was difficult to do if I didn’t have any background knowledge on the topic. For example, in the first unit, it was hard for me to figure out what some of the writers were arguing because I wasn’t aware of the background of the topic and so I wasn’t able to specifically identify the problem at hand. This made it tougher for me to synthesize articles. Once I got used to identifying the claims, I was able to get more out of my sources. Accurately identifying the claims also gave me more terms and keywords that also aided me in my research. I thought that the “Quick-n-Dirty heuristic” was especially helpful with regard to finding new keywords and terms because it forced me to search for different things. I even tried researching things that didn’t seem important initially and I obtained a few good sources based off of those key words. I had the realization that if I can’t find any major key terms, I could still be just as successful using seemingly less important words. I no longer needed ten sources to write an article or an essay; I only needed like four of five because I could now extract more necessary and useful details. I also cut down the time it took to conduct research because I was able to cut out the time that it would normally take me to think of things to research.

When I learned about the unit two and three assignments, I already knew what I wanted to research and talk about because I already had a strong interest in the subject. I knew a lot about the topic already and I already had a stance on the issue without doing any research. In my research, my goal was to find sources that were interesting, that identified the controversy, and that backed or opposed my claim. I already liked the topic so reading about it and learning more about it was joyful to me but I knew that not everyone shared the same passion as me. The group work where we had to briefly explain our topic, and take a stance, and then have my partners share their view helped me put myself in the mind of my audience. I was also fond of the posters that we made where we put our controversy on it and then the entire class critiqued it for the same reason. I learned a lot more through research than I shared because it wasn’t as important as some of the other information. My topic was very complex so I know that there is still a lot to learn and I want to still learn about it. I want to continue to research about the future of the nuclear energy, specifically in the case of power plant designs, and I also would like to delve a little deeper into the history surrounding nuclear energy that created the misconceptions that most people mistakenly believe in today.

I would share my unit 3 piece with really anybody that was willing to listen to me. I would choose this piece because I care very deeply about the topic that I chose to write about. I put a lot of research and a lot of effort into understanding and conveying that information in a way that would make sense and be convincing to whoever was reading it. I provided several specific claims and I also provided evidence to support my claims. I would hope that after reading it, the reader would have a different outlook on nuclear energy. I strongly believe that nuclear energy is the energy of the future and I did my best to share this belief to my audience. My goal was to just encourage my audience to maintain an open mind with regard to nuclear energy because with the ongoing energy crisis that is among us today, no options should be ruled out without proper research being done first.