Project Description
In this project, we decided to write a book called "The Book of Us" which is a project that Dr. P has now done for the third time with a class of his. The book is a compilation of different writing pieces on assorted topics that we all personally chose to write about. I chose to write apiece titled "Understanding Negativity". In this piece, I broke down a few forms of negativity that we face by saying what they are, why we feel them, and how to deal with this emotion.
Real-World Writing Purposes
The way that I feel this project helped me in my real-world writing skills is by putting me in the situation of being able to narrow my thoughts down to one subject. This was tough for me to do because I usually have scattered thoughts so I had to find a way to organize these thoughts. I found it most helpful to create mind maps for me on paper to visually see the different directions I can take my writing into.
1 Topic = 18 Topics
5 Minute Quick WriteA 5 minute quick write is something that we do on a weekly (if not daily) basis. These give us the freedom to choose a topic and write about it in an uninterrupted chunk of time.
During these 5 minutes, I chose to jot down notes about Disneyland and the negative sides of it that not everyone takes time to notice. |
Down Draft
A down draft is a document that you use to get all of your ideas down in writing. This doesn't mean the piece of writing is perfect because it is a work in progress. My down draft changed from the topic of reality TV to the topic of how technology has now altered our communication skills.
Here is the link to my document: Down Draft
Here is the link to my document: Down Draft
Graphic Organizers
The graphic organizers that we were given were meant to help us get our thoughts together and sort them out. I personally think that I work better for creating a mind map for myself and just going off of my own structure, so I don't think they benefitted my writing piece. While I don't think that the greatly impacted my writing piece, I think it was a good experience of seeing many different ways or organizing my thoughts.
Feedback & Critique
We went though a series of different rounds to receive as much critique as we could in the time that we had. Late in the process (after about three rounds of critique) I changed the topic I was writing about because I didn't have much else to say about my initial topic and I felt there was a disconnect after that point. I then decided to write about why an important part of thinking positively is being able to analyze the negative aspects of our mindsets and emotions.
Final Draft
Here is the link to my final writing piece for The Book of Us : Understanding Negativity
Reflection
This project was very hard for me because of the fact that I had so much freedom as a writer. As I said I was initially going to write about a topic different than the one I originally wrote my down draft about and this was a very stressful process for me. I had so many ideas of what I wanted to write about but I didn't feel very connected to any of them until I started my piece about positivity. This was impacted by a project I did in my 9th Grade Humanities class with my teacher Ms. Britt called "The Happiness Project". This project made me very into wanting to learn about what makes us as humans experience happiness and what holds us back from it. As still being very interested, I decided to use this topic as my main point in The Book Of Us.