Overview This was our final project my Sophomore year. After learning for a semester on immigration, we had to write a short story on putting ourselves in their shoes. Each group was given a Latin American country that we learned the history of. We then learned about writing techniques and different skills. We relied on our peers to critique us as well as Matt to really try to capture what its like immigrating from Latin America. I worked with Lupe, Zion, and Nick.
Growth Thought the process I really struggled with tying to get my thoughts on to paper. I think that maintaining interest had a lot to do with this. As I wrote I began to get more repetitive and didn't really notice until I had it critiqued by Matt. I think some of the best feed back I got was to capture the setting. I often times forget to do this because I know what I imagine it to look like in my head, but the reader doesn't unless I set it for them. I figured out that once I spent a lot of time putting details into describing what the character was seeing the story was better.
Reflection It was often times hard to remain good communication in my group, because our stories didn't intertwine at all. We struggled with having the same desires for our outcome. Something that really helped was how flexible Zion was. He really tried to work through problems and was always willing to change something if it didn't fit well. Writing from an immigrants point of view was really hard, because I obviously don't know what it was like and could only guess. Often times I felt like I really had to watch what I wrote, because it might vibe insensitive. Thought this project I think that my editing skills really improved. I was a chief editor and had to look over a lot of peoples stories. I am usually the kind of person that gives "its good" feedback, but I really tried to spend a lot of time trying to better my peers stories and help them become better writers as well as accepting critique to become a better writer. Staying on task was also a challenge writing about a given topic isn't always the easiest thing to do and I got off task a lot, so I had to write a lot at home. I learned that either way the work needs to get done so if I don't use my time wisely in school ill have to use my free time at home. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K43al9fDactPC0kHpBQnNkd59Dm_BBgmNBmB80r_Fok/edit