Reflection on Research Paper 1

Looking back now at my report on commuting I see many flaws that could’ve been fixed to an extent where it was more coherent and/or more engaging. Commuting isn’t the hottest topic nor is it something that relates to everyone, but I felt that the people who can relate to the topic will feel more attracted since there is not a whole lot of other outlets that really discuss the “art” of commuting. The flaws I now notice were introduced to me from both the criticism assignment in class as well and Professor Marsh’s comments on my final report. I notice I did not include a straight forward topic sentence, but in some eyes that may be a positive but I can see where it would make the paper confusing. I also learned that one answer is not sufficient if you want to hit a topic from all different angles. If I found an answer from an interviewee that agreed with my personal opinion, I tended to think that that was the popular belief and did not make a strong enough effort to pin point the other thoughts on that issue. For example, in my paper I discussed how money was the biggest burden on a commuter, but one of the people I interviewed disagreed and that sort of threw me off track. Thankfully I caught it, and changed the so-called “fact” to a personal opinion.

Writing is an important part in the learning system but some times we are forced to write about something that has either no relevance or no interest to us. This paper allowed us to explore our interest and things that we felt like documenting, and to no surprise, it was much more enjoyable than your typical ten page history paper. However, even if it was “fun”, you got to do the gritty work and get some research. Searching sites like wikipedia, or going out and going to this building that seems ancient now; I think its called a library. Reading through books is a great way to get information directly instead of an article either reviewing or summarizing it because different people have different thoughts. My topic about commuting wasn’t really something that can be researched through books other than for statistics, so my form of research was asking commuters themselves. I hoped I had organized my data clearer and had quoted them through out my paper, because that would have given it more life.

Reading, writing and research are the things we preach in class and they certainly are worthy of looking in to. They give us structure and a cohesive final product. The topic of commuting was very personal but that a topic that really stresses the reading aspect, so in the future I’ll try to take on a topic which encompasses all three points in what we learn. After all, we will be reading, writing, and doing research for the rest of our lives, might as well fine tune it now.