In my introduction, I will go through my process of completing major assignments and key things I learned that helped me improve on my essays. The major assignments started with the Context Project.

CP

When I was first notified of this project, it seemed like a headache just picking on a good topic that I could write a couple pages about. However, the class sessions were extremely helpful for me because talking about my topic with other students built confidence that my topic would work out. In addition, reading the sample essays really helped out with seeing how detailed my topic should be. For example, when I was first writing out my draft, I originally had the title as Hog Farming and Climate Change, but I quickly changed it to Hog Farming in North Carolina and Climate Change after seeing how all sample essays were focused on a specific region in the world. I think this was an important change to make because my assignment would be way too long if I had to write about the effects of hog farming all over the world. While writing the CP, one of the key tools that helped me was Google Scholar. Reading the articles, I found that a lot of them were very dense with information because most of them were science research papers with fancy, science lingo. Practicing active reading in a previous process assignment really helped me brush off the rust after not taking a writing class in a couple months and was crucial for helping me save time when reading through articles that I chose as my source. In addition, it helped me understand the article in a deeper level so I could more easily simplify the topic for my audience.

Figure 1. Active Reading Process Work

Another assignment that helped me write up the CP project was the annotated bibliography practice. After doing this assignment, I had a good idea of how to use the EasyBib website and made the process a lot more simple for me. One of the most important things I learned during class was in the lecture that included templates. When I first learned about them, I didn't think they would help me that much. However, I quickly realized after reading through some of the templates that they were actually a really good guide and helped me get the words that I want to say onto paper very quickly. After I realized this, I decided to make one of the paragraphs in my CP project using a template. In Figure 2, the paragraph I wrote was about the the injustice that people of color had to face in terms of community distance from odor-producing industrial farms. Using the template in this paragraph helped me write out the paragraph very quickly and guided me on the information I would have to know to write the paragraph out. I used the entire template for this paragraph, but I also decided to add some more sentences where I thought could use more information. Also, I noticed that the template used the word "I", which I learned from lecture was a word that should generally be avoided, so I replaced it by stating that the information was important. Looking back, I wish I had known about the template sooner because I would have used them a lot more. 

Figure 2. Paragraph using template

AP

In the AP project, I wrote it similarly to the the CP project and used the same active reading strategies to gather important sources. When I had turned in the first draft, I was a little confused in the direction that I wanted to go for the essay. In Figure 3, I made use of outlining what I wanted to talk about to keep my paragraphs organizationally strong and cohesive, however, it felt like I could look into a lot of perspectives on the topic and I did not know which direction I wanted to go in. Initially, I settled for writing about how people decided to solve the problem of industrial hog farming by using money from hog companies to research innovations that might solve the problem. By far, the most important thing I utilized during this project was revising my work using feedback from both the professor and my peer review partner. With the feedback I received, I decided to investigate into the perspective of environmentalist groups through their recent actions and write about what they thought the best way to fix the current industrial hog farming problem was. As with the articles from the CP project, the articles I read for the AP project were also very dense in information and using active reading strategies helped me build a good understanding so I could explain the topic to my audience in a way that they could understand.

Figure 3. Outline for AP project

Beyond the Course

Looking back, I realize that many of the concepts practiced throughout this course can be used not only in writing my essay, but also in many different other areas. In my CP project, I used writing conventions in a way that an audience that was not well versed in science lingo would be able to understand. This idea of using specific conventions to address a certain audience was important for the this class, but it is actually something that can be useful in all types of writing where there is an audience and is something that I will likely continue doing well after finishing the course. In addition, in both CP and AP projects, I utilized active reading. This is also a skill that is useful in any area where I have to read. Actually, I already am using this skill in my Pol Sci 51a class because I am given a lot of of news articles to analyze. When I am outside of college, I can see myself still reading news articles and continuing to practice active reading strategies. In my AP project, I made the use of outlining to create an essay that is organizationally strong. This skill is something that I can see be used a lot in my future career as a software engineer. When writing code, I can make use of outlines in the form of a program development technique called test-driven development. In this process, it works similarly to an outline because I would have to write tests before writing the actual code in the program.