Workshop Notes and Reflection

What feedback from your classmates was most helpful? What things were brought up that you hadn’t thought of that you will implement in your revision process?

  • First four pages were great, concise, and clear, but then the last three pages were a little fuzzy and less specific
  • Block quote felt separate from the rest of that paragraph (sounds more like its focusing on human dominance over nature – how does that relate to the rest of it?)
  • When talking about mental health benefits, maybe give a specific person, experience or case study with a statistic that shows that this works (paragraph on page five)
  • Further emphasize the idea of mental health throughout – you mention stress and depression and other conditions, but you might want to add “… and reducing these things help improve our mental health” so that everything your saying is clearly connected to your thesis
  • On the paragraph on page five, you say “beautiful” and “ugly” – redefine these words (just  like how “good” and “bad” were vague in the outline), despite having already defined this earlier on with other examples… spell it out for the readers.
  • If you say the words “happier” and “less stressed”, make sure to restate that this leads to improved mental health (connect the dots for your readers)
  • Statistic to go with Birmingham study?
  • Try to include more examples throughout so that the essay isn’t so half and half (as far as specific examples and evidence goes)

These were all the notes I took while my peers gave me feedback. Most of these things I hadn’t thought of, and the most helpful takeaway was probably that I should restate things a few times throughout the essay so that I’m making very clear connections and spelling things out for the readers.

Brief response to each of your group mates’ progress. You have all seen each other’s work develop over several workshops toward the same project, so you should be able to really track each other’s growth and trajectory toward your common goal of the paper.

In Anna’s case, I wasn’t surprised by her first draft – during critiques for our “curiosity boxes” she had made it clear that theres a lot of information that she’s pulled from her research and that she’s having a hard time organizing it. Her essay reflected it (and she mentioned it before I read it), but I feel that the advice Esther and I gave her as far as organization goes when talking it over will (hopefully) help. I was also excited to hear what she’s doing for her studio project and how it relates to her essay. With Esther, I was kind of surprised when I read her essay – I didn’t really know what to expect. Her curiosity box only seemed to cover one or two things, so when I read her essay I saw things that hadn’t been mentioned before. I was glad to see that she’s furthered her research, and I’m curious to find out what her project in studio will be.

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