Project 1 Draft 1 with feedback | gateway-eportfolio

Re-purposing Draft 1 (+ Feedback)

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“The piece appears to be a response to those who think that humanities hold little value in most professional environments are that their validity is confined by academic fields.” –Nick

Here, Nick was able to identify my primary audience for this draft. I found it interesting that he only mentioned the humanities side of the argument. While writing this first draft, my intention was to have more balance between discussions about the humanities and those discussions about the sciences. However, now that I read this comment, it would make sense to mind the humanities. So the balance between the topics isn’t a priority here.

“The piece is clearly supposed to be an article of some sort. It poses an argument and backs it up with data from specific studies as well as your own personal beliefs. Your argumentative approach is legitimized by the fact you used hyperlinks to cite specific examples which support your ideas which I thought to be very effective.” –Nick

Because of the hyperlinks, Nick was able to identify what kind of genre I was aiming for. I wanted to write in the style of an Atlantic article, so this was good to hear.

“The audience of the piece seems to be both those who are currently studying subjects within the humanities sphere, as well as those who do not see the true value in doing so. It is almost as if you are both reminding humanities majors/scholars of the value of their studies in addition to arguing against those who feel otherwise.” –Nick

“I believe the audience is students who want to study humanities but believe they won't find jobs, and faculty and individuals involved in education who do not value the humanities enough, and therefore fail to give proper funding and credit to these subjects.” –Lexi

While Nick and Lexi were right about my audience being people who don’t see as much professional value in the humanities, I didn’t mean to have humanities majors be my primary audience. However, after reading the feedback, I did find that idea to be interesting. In the second draft and more so in the third, I made college students my primary audience.

Because of the hyperlinks, Nick was able to identify what kind of genre I was aiming to write in. I wanted to write in the style of an article in The Atlantic, so this was good to hear.

“There was never a question as to what your stance was on the issue nor were there any holes in your general argument. However it might be a good idea to include a bit more about the future implications of re-establishing the value of the humanities as fields of study. That could be a nice way to cap off your article.” –Nick

While I did make the case of the humanities as valid fields of study for society, I agree that it would be nice if I could tie that to the end of this article.

“You argue that jobs are equal in the humanities and that although it is not looked upon as highly as the sciences, it is equally important.” –Lexi

Here, Lexi was able to grasp the overarching thesis of my article. This piece of feedback was a good sign to me that I was making my claims clear.

“Are you trying to tailor your piece to look like an Atlantic article or more like a research paper?” –Lexi

Lexi brings up a good point here. Even though I had aimed to write in article format, this text ended up looking more like a research paper. The only difference was that I had hyperlinked my sources instead of putting them on a references page.

“I think it would be great to put in your personal connection to this topic. Reading about school subjects can get a little boring and tedious, but hearing why you chose this topic would break up the paragraphs solely focusing on research!” –Lexi

Here is the first piece of feedback that addresses my struggle of balancing reflective writing and evidence-based writing. Even though articles in The Atlantic can contain anecdotes, I failed to include them in this draft. For this first draft, I had done most of the research. Because of this, I felt more compelled to focus more on the facts that could make my claims true rather than also reflecting on why I think they are true. Part of the reason I chose to write about this topic was to find out why it matters to me so much. I had witnessed people questioning humanities majors for their major choices, and I wanted to see how legitimate my opinions in the grand scheme of things. I continue to wrestle with the balance of evidence and reflection until the third draft. I had a story that related to this paragraph written down somewhere, so I resolved to put it around here for the next draft.

I don't even think people really know all that encompasses the humanities” –Lexi

It is true that this vagueness could be an issue. I knew that the University of Michigan counts humanities courses as subjects that pertain to the creations of humans. They include philosophy, classics, history, and literature. In this article, I built off of that definition and went as far as including things like music, art, and theater. Even though some refer to those as the arts, I still see them as subjects that relate to the idea of human creation. I went ahead and clarified this in the second draft.

It seemed logical to begin this article by introducing some assumptions made about the sciences and the humanities, then proceeding to speak against them. By the time I finished writing, I felt like I was doing more of the presenting the opposing ideas rather than the disproving of them. It was also really hard not to make generalizations about the assumptions. I was trying to argue that valuing the sciences over the humanities was a common belief. However, I realized that if I continued to make a lot of generalizations, my audience might not understand what I am trying to say and even question my claims. I resolved to eliminate these generalizations in the second draft. I figured more research was the only way to make my claims more accurate.

As for the genre, I thought that I could make it resemble an article by changing it spatially. With the spatial mode, I could divide parts of my article into more digestible and cohesive bits.

“I would love to see images or videos embedded into your article. –Lexi

It is a convention for The Atlantic articles to have at least one picture in their articles. I meant to have visuals in the article but didn’t until the third draft.