1. My goal for this paper was to be as creative as possible and adhere to the suggestions I got in my workshopping of Step #1 in order to revise that step into Step #3. I think I did a decent job of editing out some extraneous detail and making the humor and slang work towards a more realistic dialogue. I think I did a good job, though the page count went up by over 50% from Step #1 to Step #3. Yikes!
2. I developed this paper by looking back at the suggestions I got from my inquiry group for Step #1 Dialogue and making all the changes they suggested save one: I wasn't able to shorten my paper from 11 pages. Instead the finished product sits at 17 pages. I really appreciated the quality time my inquiry group put in on my workshop. I got some great feedback and was able to make this dialogue really speak to the reader. After workshopping, my dialogue was able to become a real play!
3. I saw myself taking bigger risks by choosing to revise the Step #1 Dialogue as opposed to my Step #2 Academic Work. I really like the setting of my PTA meeting in Step #1. I feel it was a good choice because that kind of atmosphere lends itself to polite disagreement and democracy while still feeling organized and realistic. I really appreciated the suggestions from my group to add more stage directions and slang to make the dialogue more like a real play. I think they gave me good suggestions about what kind of voice each character would talk in, so I was able to be more playful than I might have dared, had they not given me the encouragement.
4. Of course, my interviewee, Teresa Beck, contributed loads to my paper's success. Teresa is such a character that all I had to do was write down her responses verbatim and add some more jokes and cute stuff. Beck really brings in the authentic perspective of the teacher on the front lines, so I think her character makes some great points that none of my sources pointed out. She's an invaluable resource, not to mention an incredible friend!
5. I think I learned that I am really more drawn to humorous, creative styles of writing as opposed to the cold, dry, academic style of the traditional research paper. I know a lot of people found the Step #1 Dialogue challenging, but I loved it and clearly had a lot to say in this style of writing. I really thought this was a great way to approach the "conversation" Megan's always talking about; I had a very long conversation to record and I hope I did a faithful job. I learned from others that some writers are willing to take risks and some simply can't bear to do it. I think this paper represents the biggest writing risk I've taken this semester, but, good grade or bad, I really had fun writing it!
6. The hardest part of writing this paper was attempting to keep it short and succinct. Not surprising to ANYONE, I had a lot to say on a big topic of interest to education right now, and I hope I did the inquiry justice in that ridiculous length. I think I took risks with using humor and silliness to make my characters believable. There's a very good chance I may have gone too far and given them viewpoints they didn't actually have. but I really did try to give my sources a voice that reflected their biases (where present) and general credibility without compromising the fun inherent in such an assignment.
7. I am most proud of the way I was able to incorporate the stage directions and slang my group members suggested I add in order to make my dialogue more real, more like a play. I think I had already said a lot, and I thought it interesting that they asked me to add stuff in and only omit things I really could do without. Overall, I think I made a good choice to revise this Step as opposed to the other; I really tried hard on this one!
8. I still think I could stand to omit bits of dialogue that may have been redundant or pointless. I hesitated to do that because real people say redundant, pointless things quite often; even this may have given me some of the authenticity I was looking for. I did make other improvements at the suggestion of my group, but the length was non-negotiable, really. If I'm being honest, I knew from the start that it was going to be long, both due to my enthusiasm for this style of writing and my natural tendency to be verbose.
9. Most of my brainstorming had to do with coming up with the perfect setting that would have brought all my sources together in one spot to talk to one another. Once I settled on a PTA meeting in a middle school, I just sat down and started writing. I don't know that I've ever typed faster! It may have taken me three hours to type around 11 pages, so I guess I was excited. Just a teeny bit! After I finished, I spot checked it for grammar errors and then workshopped with my group. I took their suggestions and modified my paper where they told me to. I then went back and hunted down citations and page numbers in the attempt to make the citations proper. I feel I still may be having trouble with doing that properly. Then I cleaned up some of the prose and created a Works Cited page. Finally I submitted it with the best of intentions and tried not to think about being graded down because I wrote too much!!
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