Siteology Article Reflection

1. What are you most proud of about your writing in the Siteology book?
I had never written a narrative non-fiction before, and it turned out to be quite challenging for
me. However, I think the outcome was good, especially as a first attempt at this style of writing
and Im really proud of it. I think its a good starting point and I learned a lot for future reference
about the best ways to write good narratives. I am most proud of the way I formatted it. I think
the transitions are good, make sense and make it so I'm not just jumping around ideas. A lot of
my essay is about how I personally feel about the situation and in the essay I managed to
incorporate those ideas along with facts and the story of what I experienced going to Chicano
park and to the meeting for immigrants.
2. In what ways did your writing measure up positively to professional examples?
Copy/paste at least one sample of professional writing and describe how your work
compares favorably to professional writing.
One of the articles I read for reference was Consider the Lobster. After reading it, I really liked
the introduction and decided I wanted to write something similar. What I liked about the
introduction was the way the event was described so thoroughly. It not only had the retelling of
what the experience was like, but it included numeric data and information that helped to further
prove the authors point of the events popularity:
The assigned subject of this article is the 56th Annual MLF, July 30 to August 3, 2003, whose
official theme was Lighthouses, Laughter, and Lobster. Total paid attendance was over
80,000, due partly to a national CNN spot in June during which a Senior Editor of a certain other
epicurean magazine hailed the MLF as one of the best food-themed festivals in the world. 2003
Festival highlights: concerts by Lee Ann Womack and Orleans, annual Maine Sea Goddess
beauty pageant, Saturdays big parade, Sundays William G. Atwood Memorial Crate Race,
annual Amateur Cooking Competition, carnival rides and midway attractions and food booths,
and the MLFs Main Eating Tent, where something over 25,000 pounds of fresh-caught Maine
lobster is consumed after preparation in the Worlds Largest Lobster Cooker near the grounds
north entrance.
In my writing, I did something very similar to this when I described Chicano park and its Aztec
dance event, including numeric data, with a descriptive explanation of what it is like.
3. In what ways can you develop your writing to meet (or exceed) professional standards?
Copy/paste relevant samples of outstanding writing and describe the steps that you can
take to continue to improve your work or do better next time.
Something I would love to work on and improve on is the writing tip, 'the loop'. An article that I
chose as another reference was No Mercy. This article had a perfect loop and thats what I
want to work on in my article, making sure its relevant and perfectly written. I specifically want
to work on incorporating the shotgun rule. In No Mercy, the author used the shotgun rule
perfectly: Describing a whole scene that connects to what the article is all about, but leaving out
the name of the person the whole story is about. This is one tiny detail that in the end, when the

whole thing loops back around, is revealed and turns out to be a very important name. The way
that the loop was used was perfect and its what I aspire to write like eventually.
As for the student whose career Cambridge saved? He left at the end of the academic year and
went to study at the University of Gottingen, where he made important contributions to quantum
theory. Later, after a brilliant academic career, he was entrusted with leading one of the most
critical and morally charged projects in the history of science. His name was Robert
Oppenheimer
4. In what ways did your research & research methods measure up positively to
professional examples? Copy/paste at least one sample of professional writing that
reveals his/her research & research methods and describe how your work compares
favorably to professional work.
Something he did was actually go to the event and experience it for himself in order to write
about it from his perspective. When I went to Chicano Park to see the Aztec dancing, I got the
opportunity to experience the event firsthand and therefore, it made it easier for me to write
about it. I also got the opportunity to attend a "conference' about immigrant rights and
afterwards I got to interview the speaker and ask him about a short outline of what life is like for
illegal migrant workers. Going to a talk that is attended by a majority of possibly illegal
immigrants, I got the opportunity to feel what it is like to not know what your rights are, but to
have someone who is looking out for you. I also got the opportunity to hear all the questions that
people had for Benjamin (the speaker) and that in a way was like conducting an interview, but a
secret one. When doing online research, you never truly get the feel of the event that you get
by actually going and you never get to hear firsthand what the actual people are feeling. Online
research is a way to find information that the author thoughts was important, but you can lose a
lot of what is important to the person and relevant to your article. This is why attending events is
so important and something that I wanted to focus on doing. I got the opportunity to see the
Aztec dancing for myself and write about it in a thorough fashion that could only be done
because I was there and I experienced the way everything looked, felt and smelled.
The enormous, pungent, and extremely well marketed Maine Lobster Festival is held every late
July in the states midcoast region, meaning the western side of Penobscot Bay, the nerve stem
of Maines lobster industry. Whats called the midcoast runs from Owls Head and Thomaston in
the south to Belfast in the north. (Actually, it might extend all the way up to Bucksport, but we
were never able to get farther north than Belfast on Route 1, whose summer traffic is, as you
can imagine, unimaginable.)
5. In what ways can you develop your research & research methods to meet professional
standards? Copy/paste relevant professional samples of outstanding professional
research & research methods and describe the steps that you can take to continue to
improve your work or do better next time.
Consider the Lobster consisted of a lot of interviews. That is something that is missing in my
writing. I only got the chance to interview one person (Benjamin), and although it was helpful, I
now understand that interviews are crucial to writing narrative non fiction. I did get a very good

feel about the topic that I was writing about, especially because of the conference, but that was
from my own experience. To create quality narrative non-fictional writing, it is crucial to have a
clear understanding of what the experience is like for the people who are living in the conditions
every day.
One of the reasons I didn't do this was because finding someone who would be willing to be
interviewed about this topic proved to be very hard, but looking back, I now know where i could
have looked for guidance and I now see how much better my writing could have been had I
interviewed more people. I learned that the best way to find people is sometimes through
organizations rather than looking for them independently, which was something that I didn't
know about before. This is what I mean when I say that I created a good narrative non fiction,
but it can only get better from where it's at right now. I like the way it turned out as a first
attempt, and now I feel as if I can only grow from it.

6. What was the most effective feedback that you received while drafting & revising your
article? Copy/paste the feedback below and describe with evidence how it influenced
your subsequent work.
Audrey helped me a lot with critiques and feedback. I think the most helpful thing she did for me,
other than small word tweaks and sentence re-configurations, was helping me find links that
were very relevant to my research. She helped me to rethink what I wanted to write about,
because at the beginning I was kind of lost about where I was going with both my research and
my writing. After she critiqued my zero draft, she gave me feedback about what to write about
and how I could improve what I had so far. I used her feedback to completely restart and wrote
a first draft that was very different from my zero draft. She suggested that I write about the
struggles of immigrants way more than just their working schedule, and to do it in a way that
sounded a little more like a story (what I had written as a zero draft was basically a research
paper with a lot of numbers and not any story) This is feedback that drove my drafts into what it
ended up being.
7. What questions do you have about your work?
I wonder what it could have been had I done more interviews...
Other than that I don't really have many questions about my work.
8. Overall, out of 50 points, what would you award to your work & why?
I would give myself something close to the 50 points. I think my final essay could have turned
out better, but thats only because this was a new style of writing for me and I didn't have
enough of an understanding of what it should look like. I worked very hard on it and spent a lot
of time and research into it. Because it was a first attempt, I truly do believe that I tries to make it
as best as I could make it, and I really want to know that all my work was not in vain. I also think
that going to the actual conference and sitting down and listening to it was an interesting
approach to researching my topic, and I like that I did something a little unusual but got amazing
notes and ideas about what to write about. This was a very long project that took a lot of work
and staying up late working on it, and I am actually proud of the way it turned out and so excited
to attempt to write something similar in the future, using this as a reference and growing from it.