Abu-Hassan 1

Halimah Abu-Hassan
Cassandra DAlessio
UWRT 1102-008
7 April 2016
Final Reflection
When first starting the inquiry projects I looked at the topics in the packets we were given
and the one that stood out most to me was the topic of war and veteran studies. I knew little to
nothing about the other topics and they also did not interest me at all. I originally thought that
with war studies I could talk about post traumatic stress disorder in children affected by war.
During the question session I came up with a few hypotheses about how war affects children.
When trying to prove my hypothesis I realized that this topic was too broad and that it was
difficult to find information on. I wanted to focus on children living in Gaza and the affects the
wars have had on them. When researching in the library I realized this was too new for me to be
able to find a lot of information on it. Then I came to the idea of just children in war in general
but decided that was too broad. I finally finished on the idea of refugees because a lot of the
children affected by war become refugees. With the current state of the middle east it was easier
to find a lot of information.
For the research aspect of the inquiry project I thought that the easiest sources to check
first would be news sources online. I found countless websites with information on refugees and
even an interactive map where refugees are constantly changing. To find some sources that are a
first hand account I liked to look at a lot of blogs and pictures this helped to give me an imagine
of what I was looking for. I found a lot of pictures and blogs from Al Jazeera news and Russian
Television news. These pictures were especially helpful for the group project to put on the

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website. The two topics I was assigned in my group were music/art and literature. The most
difficult part for me was to find literature. I used the library database to find novels that involve
refugees and I found Little Bee by Chris Cleave and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. These
two sources were most difficult for me because I had to read a good amount of each book to be
able to talk about them and I had to find the books which sadly I have never got a book from the
UNCC library before. I learned through this project how to actually check out a book. It was
easy to find the music because of ISIS and easy to find art because graffiti is common in problem
areas of the world.
What surprised me the most during my research is that the process refugees go through to
become an immigrant in other countries where they seek asylum takes years. This seemed unfair
and extremely sad that someone who is running for their life usually ends up in nasty detention
center with conditions similar to the place that they were fleeing. I found the conditions in the
detention center appalling while reading Little Bee and the process of legally coming to a country
mentally and physically draining while reading The Kite Runner. Both books were extremely
depressing but I learned a lot about how much of hardship it is to be a refugee. I feel like through
this project I learned what it really means to be struggling.
The parts of the writing process of this inquiry project that I used were the annotated
bibliography which I have never done an electronic one before. Originally I did not get a
complete on it which upset me but I realized I did not do it right. Once realizing what I needed
for it it helped me to find more reliable sources. Doing the group project also helped me to
organize my information for my final essay. The project helped to give me all the information I
needed for background research. The most helpful part was by far working together in the
library because we were surrounded by resources and basically forced to work.

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The inquiry project is different from any other one I have done before because I have
never done an electronic annotated bibliography and I have never spent more than a month on a
project. I am not very good at working technology so the bibliography was the most difficult
part and first time Ive ever done it. I also havent made a website and I feel like ours turned out
nicely and I enjoyed the final project. This class was a lot better than the first UWRT class I took
I actually hated that one and felt like it was pointless but I gained real knowledge from the
inquiry project in this class.
For the statements of learning in this class I feel like each SLO has been hit. For
rhetorical knowledge we learned how to analyze a variety of texts and sources and how they fit
different audiences because of the fact that we needed to analyze a variety of sources for our
group projects. We also learned how to experiment with our writing style and structure in our
discussion posts which also fits rhetorical knowledge. For critical reading we did a lot of that for
our discussion posts. We needed to learn from those texts and analyze the work to find a meaning
in it for ourselves. We also really experienced being able to find credibility in our readings
during the research aspect of the project. When I first started it was obvious a lot of the sources
were too biased or not accurate enough. This is when I learned how important critical reading is.
For the composing processes we had to use multiple strategies because we showed our
information in multiple mediums of information. We also employ the knowledge of composing
processes when editing other peoples papers on peer editing days. We took the ideas our peers
had for our writing and used it to strengthen our own work. For our knowledge of conventions, I
would say the way that we learn how to vary in conventions by genre is that the inquiry was
broken down into multi-modal compositions. We also had to learn how to break down different
types of genre from the very first discussion post we had, the text was written in a way not all of

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us have a lot of experience with reading. We worked on incorporating our knowledge of writing
rules in our responses to the discussion post assignments and in our actual papers. We also used
knowledge of conventions by making sure we cited everything correctly in our final paper. We
also made many revisions and had to develop a knowledge of linguistic structures. I think we
have done critical reflection in our proposal paper explaining why we chose our topic and what
we were doing with it and I am currently employing it in this reflection paper. During our
revisions we did critical reflection as well because we had to revise our work and and go over the
choices we made. We also do reflections in many of the daybook assignments. We are asked to
reflect on the work we did through our writing and demonstrate our rhetorical awareness in them.
Overall this semester I have learned a lot about how to write for different genres, how to
evaluate my own writing, how to come back from a bad revision and improve my writing. I
enjoyed seeing how my writing changed from the start. I also enjoyed the style of how things are
graded and I am excited to turn in my final portfolio and reflect on all Ive done this semester in
the class.