Reading/Writing Journal Entry 3

 Hi everyone, 

I'm back with the last of my mini journal entries from my college English class. The semester is wrapping up and while I'm in the middle of preparing for finals, I have finished another project for my English class since I last filled you guys in.

After writing that extensive rhetorical analysis, I wasn't too thrilled at the idea of starting another paper that would inevitably take up much of my time. However, this next paper we would write would be a group paper on a topic of our choosing. At first, I was apprehensive of the idea of doing a huge group paper. Would I be put in a group where I would do most of the work? Would my group members be rude? Turns out, the group I had was pretty sufficient in getting work turned in on time. 

The topic that my group and I picked out needed to be easily searchable and pertain to campus. After jumping around from idea to idea, we decided to research the idea of dorm rooms. To narrow down such a broad topic, we decided to pick out one of the oldest dorm buildings on campus and one of the newer modern dorm buildings and find out what made the dorms comfortable. We needed to include both primary and secondary sources, so we started right away. 

We sent out a survey to the two buildings that we were using for our paper. Surprisingly enough, we got a lot of responses from both buildings that gave us just what we needed. In our survey, we included questions about what made dorm rooms comfortable, the cleanliness, and how welcoming buildings were along with an area of what improvements could be added to the building. Most of the students who responded to our survey gave fours and fives on our ranking scale, showing that they were pretty happy with their dorm. The most common answer on what made dorm rooms comfortable was being able to make them their own and the friends that they made. Surprisingly enough, the most commented improvement was to have more security in the buildings such as cameras in the hallway. 

The secondary research was pretty easy in finding articles. We were able to meet with one of the librarians who gave us articles that would be beneficial to us and were related to our topics of dorm rooms. We split up the work of the paper evenly and it was super nice to be able to have our work all evenly divided. Not having to write a seven to eight-page paper by yourself is so nice when all you have to do is write a few small sections. 

Overall, I think the paper turned out pretty great. Our group all pitched in and the results that we received from others made it turn out well. I learned a lot more about what others thought about their dorms on campus and it was great to get insight into some new perspectives when writing the paper. I think people shouldn't be too daunted at the idea of writing a group paper when they realize that the work will just be evenly split up, putting less stress on you. 

Well, that's all for now. I have to go study for my other finals and work on my portfolio project for my English class. Here's to getting through the first semester of college!

Sincerely,

Midwestern Redhead