When I was first told that we have a podcast project to write, I did not know what a podcast is and how to do it. I did not know where to observe and who to observe. But after looking at the examples given in class, I know that we can basically go anywhere and observe everyone that goes to the place I observe. There were lots of difficult places for me as I do this project, but I also learned a lot from it. I advanced my skills in using primary research to evaluate a subject, and revise my drafts based on the feedbacks from my peers.
I chose to do my primary research, which is my observation in the UC Davis Memorial Union, where a lot of students gather there every day. But as I observe people tried to write down everything I see for the two hours I am there, found it difficult to record everyone and everything I see, and my hands got sour from writing too much. So what I do is think about my research question: how does students’ interaction with the environment around them affect the students? And what I found more effective is that now to write down the same things such as a woman or man walk by with their headphones on, which is what a lot of people do when they walk pass the memorial union. Instead, I write down details about people who made interactions with something else and how they seem to changed after the interaction. These changes can be small facial expressions, or their walking postures. If someone’s mood became better, they seem to have a smile on their face and not a serious face, and they seem to walk with their heads up and not looking down at their phones. This method really helped me when I was observing and when I am writing down the details in my podcast. As I being to write my podcast, I need to introduce myself to my readers, because this is a podcast, and I would need to record my voice later. So I need my readers to know who I am first. Then I introduced my research question and provided some background information about the place I observe to give my readers a overview and a preview of what I am going to talk about in my essay. As I write down my observations, I found it similar to writing the “shitty first drafts” like I did in my other essays as well. Because I am still writing down everything I observed in the memorial union, and provided a lot of details about things I observed. And this is a method I need to use for all of my writing assignments. When I get the feedbacks from my peers, I can better understand them as well through practices from the two feedbacks before and I can better edit my essays after reading them. I would not just change all the places my peers said that needed to be improved, instead, I look at all of their comments first, and then I would reread my essay again and see if the places they point out really have a big issue. For example, when my peer made a comment at the beginning of my introduction paragraph and said that I should provide more information about the place I observe, I would know that I do not actually need that because I have provided that information already in my essay, it is just in the later part of that paragraph. It is just that my peers have not read that part yet. By using this method, I can avoid unnecessary steps to save time as I revise my essay, and revise it more effectively. After writing this podcast project, where I improved my skills in doing primary research and editing essays from reading peer feedbacks, I felt more confident about writing. I learned how to put a connection in my observations and details to my research question. And how to read my peer review feedbacks in a better way. And I also found that writing in details really help to convey my ideas better, because if I put a vague description, I would not be able to make my readers understand at all when I connect these back to my research question. This is a method I need to use for all of my writing assignments in the future and they will help me write better and better essays.
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