TT Essay Reflection

Project Description:

One of the main parts of the Time Traveler's project was writing a professionally formatted research paper about our pillar and ancient civilization. I was assigned the 'Religion and Society' pillar, and the ancient civilization my group was doing our project on was the Anasazi Indians. My essay had to talk about religion on its own as well as the role it played in the Ancient Pueblo People's lives.

Process:

This was a very intricate writing piece, and it was revised and edited several times. We were given a few lessons on how to write bibliographies and add footnotes. At first it was really confusing to me, but then once I understood it it began to go more smoothly. We started by writing a rough draft at the start of our object building time. We went through about three or four drafts by the time we handed in our final essays. We had a 'cross cultural conference' as well as an 'intra team conference' to learn more in depth about our civilizations as well as others. They were a little bit stressful to prepare for, but they really helped me with being more confident in my essay's content.

Reflection:

I learned a ton of information about how ancient indian civilizations lived and what they did on a daily basis to survive. I really had no idea how intelligent of a society they were and how much teamwork it took to survive the harsh climates they lived in.

At first I had a lot of trouble correctly creating the body of my essay. The thing I was having the most trouble with was following the 'funnel' outline Charlotte taught us. It wasn't that it was hard for me to understand, it was just that I had already written in what I had thought was the correct format, and it threw me off when I had to rearrange the format of my writing to something I wasn't used to.

I think I managed my time very well with writing the essay, so I would not change how I did that. One thing I would change, however, would be the fact that I did not take advantage of Charlotte's provided office hours. There were a few things about the essay that I wasn't understanding, and I had to figure it all out on my own. What I should have done was gone to Charlotte's office hours and gotten help directly from her when she offered it to the team.

Acknowledging this will help me later on in life because I should really take advantage of the opportunities that I am given to get help with the things I know I need help with. Those opportunities are there for my benefit, and I should make sure I am using them to my advantage whenever I am presented with the chance.

Artifact:

Click HERE to take a look at my final essay.