Tyler Garrett 1

March 27
th
, 2014

ENG 106

Aria Halliday
Reflective Cover Memo
As I read through the final draft of my personal ethnography, which is about Fairway
Cooperative, I am encouraged by the references that I included. The references were referring
to in-class situations where we talked about or presented our thoughts on discourse
communities. Creating a research log throughout the week was not as tough as it might seem,
the log just needs to be consistent in the amount of content being entered in.
Analyzing my final copy and looking at the overall picture I have made, I appreciate it.
While writing the paper I instantly remember things that we had done in class that helped me
write more fluently. In the beginning of my paper I remember thinking back to the very first day
where Ms. Halliday wrote the word discourse community up on the chalk board and when we
later discussed ethnographies. While I am writing this I am constantly reminded of when we
gave a three minute explanation on what a discourse community is and how one functions. In
editing my final paper, I was able to clear up some concerns that I had because I trusted my
English skills. I knew that I had a good understanding of what the paper needed to entail
because of every single reading response that was required to be written.
As far as planning everything out and keeping an up to date research log, I am very
proud of my research. My first draft was turned in a week ahead of time and that actually really
helped me when thinking about how to edit my ethnography. I took more time working on my
ethnography than I have for any other project or homework assignment in English 106. There is
not anything in particular that I do not like about my ethnography. I struggled when I was trying
Tyler Garrett 1

March 27
th
, 2014

ENG 106

Aria Halliday
to add my pictures into the word document because the formatting was dreadful at first. One
thing I would have done differently would be to explain how strong the brotherhood is. I know
that I mentioned it in my paper but after reading the ethnography, I feel as if I could have
emphasized the brotherhood more.
Now that my final draft of my ethnography is finished, I feel accomplished. It is a large
task to write a legitimate ethnography in my mind, and I feel as if I accomplished the task at
hand not with ease, but with great success. I have more confidence in my writing abilities and
my ability to tackle a large paper in any future writing class that I might take while at Purdue.
Recording information and retaining qualitative research helped when I wanted to add certain
ideas that I might have otherwise forgotten without looking at my research log as a reference. I
believe I successfully participated in the discourse community I was studying while observing
how it functions as a whole, without a bias opinion.