Post #17: Reflection on the Course

At the beginning of this class, I was not sure what to expect. While I had received numerous ominous emails about the difficulty of the class, this contradicted about what I had heard about the class. On the first day of class, I felt that the class schedule was a lot to track in my schedule. I also felt that choosing a topic within the first week seemed unreasonable. I didn’t know what to choose; I could have performed a very technical and esoteric study or a very creative one. However, I knew that I wanted to do something where little research existed within the field.

The course became very difficult and stressful when I wrote the introduction and literature review because I had yet to change my topic to its current state. After performing close-reading, I decided that I definitely wanted to change my topic, and the close reading showed me the importance of fully reading the articles instead of reading only certain sections. I was worried at this point that I would not be able to keep up while performing regular blog assignments. This indeed was true and the fact that Marlen performed a random blog check on the one day I was not able to keep up made me consider dropping the class. However, I did not drop the class and instead performed well until I was about to launch the survey. Around this time, the class became a hassle, as I would consistently become demotivated after undirected anger in the class was released, which I interpreted as directed towards myself, even though I knew it was not the case. Hence, I was not able to launch the survey until some classes were canceled and I was not demotivated. Once I collected the data, I felt much better; this was my proudest moment in the class and was a great sigh of relief. The data analysis was the most fun part, and confirmed some of my hypotheses and research I had read.

One way I turned my worries and anxieties into strength was by being very thorough in grooming the research, even after I had changed my topic. I am somewhat of a perfectionist and did not want to turn in an assignment without performing adequate and correct research on the topic.

My future goal as a writer is to use the skills I learned in this class and apply it to my career in IT design and development. I know that I will have to creatively make presentations combining artistry, technical specifications, and good style and convention to businesses. While I may not have to write a full research paper, I will certainly have to perform studies and analysis such as the one I conducted. In addition, I will have to communicate to those higher in the chain of command the best options and the backing reasoning. I feel as if I already had the work ethic and time-management skills before the class, but the class reminded me that they will always need to be utilized.

Finally, the thing that will ‘stick with me’ for the longest amount of time after this class is the sense of community that the class fashioned. You could always walk into class and exchange in free discussion of everyone’s topic and receive constructive feedback about your plans. I liked how the ‘groups’ worked in the class, even if they were not utilized much towards the end of the semester. While most groupwork causes a disproportionate amount of work to fall on one or two members, the way groups were utilized in this class fostered individualism and worked well with the subject material. In the future, if I get a project management position in IT, I will remember this type of unit and use it appropriately within the organization, as it would be beneficial.

Blog #16: Reflection on Writing a Research Paper

During the completion of my research paper, I learned a great deal about formatting, style, conventions, and most importantly, integration of sources.  I began the project with a very rigid research question of determining how the internet has affected friendships.  I continually revised this question until I reached the question of  “how has social networking affected closeness of friendships?”  However, I felt that this topic had already been discussed in depth and was known among the general population in a subconscious manner.  Therefore, I modified my topic to a new, very narrow, and largely uncharted topic.  This of course, is the current research question I proposed: “What are the sociological motivations behind Facebook creeping?”  I found that I instantly enjoyed this topic more, because I felt as if I was performing meaningful research.  Furthermore, almost no research had been performed on the behavior in question, even though many in college are well aware of its presence and consequences.  Having a background in web development and social networking development gave me the inspiration to research the topic even though little direct research had been performed.  In fact, only one researcher had actually created a scientific name for the phenomenon, which I utilized throughout my paper.

As far as the research process, I did not find it to be as daunting as one would believe.  My previous research questions gave me a lot of background as to privacy violation and online friendship, and I used two of these studies in my final draft.  However, it was fairly difficult to separate relevant information from the older articles to apply them to the new topic. I did not encounter many problems until the final stages, after I had received all of the survey responses.  I had to creatively separate some of the responses in a manner consistent with current research in order to even consider three of my hypotheses.  From there, I also found the analysis difficult; I spent around 2.5 days on-and-off analyzing the data in around 25 Excel spreadsheets.  However, with the surprising results, it was well worth it.

I received little feedback about the paper from others before getting into the methodology section. I received help from friends in making sure the survey questions made sense to those not studying the topic. Despite the peer reviews, this help was the most useful feedback I received during the research assignment because it provided consolation that the survey would actually be able to find correlations. In addition, discussing others’ research and thinking about it in comparison to my own topics was also a great help.

The assignment which was the most useful to me during the research process was the close reading of two journal articles. This made me really consider if I wanted to stick with my current topic. Until this point, I had not fully read a journal article; I had only considered certain sections. I would later re-read in full all of the journals I had utilized, which helped me find my new topic and discover the Tufekci study.

The most difficult part of the drafting process was integrating sources from the literature review due to my change in topic. After close reading, I found that I had to eliminate some of the references and incorporate others. Consequentially, this took a large portion of my time. The easiest part of the drafting process was style and word choice. Everyone that has read the paper so far has said it sounds very professional, but I had no difficult in choosing professional language after becoming familiar with the jargon used in previous studies.

While I have written research papers before, I have never written one at the professional level. I would hope that the final essay shows the vast amount of research, time, and effort I put into the paper during the last semester. In addition, I hope that it shows my evolution as a writer as far as style and reader captivation.