Writing a research essay in a blog format has been a new and interesting challenge for me in my college writing experience. It was a different style of writing than I have written in the past. My favorite thing about writing this piece was that even though it was a research essay, it could still be written with less structure (i.e., breaks between points/thoughts as I saw fit). While writing it, I felt more like I was having a conversation with the reader.
The research, preparation and execution of this blog post helped me further recognize the importance of being invested and engaged. I had some issues with narrowing down my topic selection, and thought that the research time that I sacrificed by changing topics so many times would hurt the quality of my essay. I feel that in the end it did not.
I knew by remaining fully invested and engaged in the research and writing of this essay, no matter what the topic, I would produce a quality piece of writing.
One of the moments in this blog where I felt that I was really stuck was when I was trying to provide academic proof of the projected loss in the American economy if General Motors was allowed to fail.
As most of us know, the GM bailout only happened about two years ago. Two years isn't a very long time to come up with an academic journal entry based on what data was available in the wake of the bailout.
Luckily by remaining invested in my research, I was able to find an economic study written prior to the official bailout. The study projected what the losses would be based on the economic climate of that time period. This was all done using mathematics and equations, which really tied in well with the opening analogy that I used about the hypothetical math equation.
Writing with structure has always been something that has come natural to me. This essay and others like it are helping to broaden my horizons when it comes to college writing. Being able to express my ideas using different formats of writing helps me with my work in my international relations class.
The best passage in this blog has got to be the opening paragraph about the equation. It was something that was - in very vivid detail - explained to me by one of my interviewees. I wish that I would have been able to work that analogy into the blog in a more detailed way, but I was worried that I might have lost the readers' attention in the process.
I need to work on taking more breaks when I am writing. It took me eight hours to write this blog with only one break for dinner. I get very caught up in my writing sometimes and cannot clear my head. If I manage my time so that I can take more breaks, then I think that my writing will improve even more.
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