Project 2 Reflection and Metacognition

The drafting stages went well in my opinion. After I made my initial designs for my artifacts, I didn’t end up changing them too much. I only changed a small, few things here and there. I honestly really liked how they all turned out and I think they did a good job at conveying my message. The only thing that stressed me out was that I didn’t do as many drafts as I thought I would need to because I was so satisfied with my first draft. Without doing many drafts, it gave me doubts as to whether my artifacts would be any good since it was my first vision for the project. However, to clear up those doubts I reminded myself that sometimes our first ideas are our best ideas, and that I don’t need to overcomplicate everything. The skills that I already knew were working in Canva. I did many social media and graphics related things in high school, so I was already familiar with how to use the program. The artifact that I struggled the most with was the letter since I have never written a letter to a government official before. I did have to do some research about how to accomplish this task, but I ended up being really satisfied with the way that it turned out.

I managed my time by doing things in a specific order. I wanted to get all my artifacts done and on one document before I started to write my rhetorical rationale. I wanted to be able to look back at the document because that served as a reminder for why I made the choices that I did. I found out that I write best in the mornings, an hour or two before I usually wake up. I write best in my bed right when I get up because apparently that is when I am the most focused. I think it is because I am well rested compared to writing at night where I usually become tired and unfocused. I also enjoy waking up early to write because then it gets my brain activated early in the day versus just waiting until the afternoon to stimulate my mind. I listen primarily to acoustic country music to get myself in the mood to write and create. Especially Zach Bryan’s new album, it just creates a mind-numbing space for me to be creative in. I think it is because I have listened to the album so much that I don’t even have to think too deeply about the lyrics because I already did the first 20 times that I listened to it all the way through.

In future projects, I want to triple check my work instead of double checking it. Sometimes I feel like I don’t know what I am looking for when I double check my work. Am I looking for spelling? Am I looking for my sentences to make grammatical sense? I want to have my double checking include if what I have written aligns with what I wanted my argument to look like. Does it follow the same line of reasoning that I initially intended it too? If not, am I satisfied with the line of reasoning that I have followed during what I wrote? I want these to be the type of questions that I ask myself during my double check. This is why I think doing a once-over for grammar and then another look for what I intended to write versus what I actually wrote would be important.