Drafting and Revising Reflection

At first, my vision for this article seemed clear and simple. I only had to research what this picture was depicting and why it was on a wall in Manuel’s Tavern. Once I commenced researching, I immediately realized that my assignment was not straightforward whatsoever. After hours of digging through websites and sources, I only solidified the easier part of my assignment, the facts. But at a certain point when I was rough drafting, my piece sounded more like a summary with historical facts and clean cut statements. I needed something more. Even after hours and hours of research, I still could not pinpoint the exact reason why someone had put up this photograph in the Tavern.

Going into the one-on-one session with my professor, I was anxious that what I had written was not sufficient. But he calmly reassured me that I was not in a bad spot at all. In fact, now that I had really understood the context of the photograph from looking through its history, I had the opportunity to invent and speculate some of my own interpretations. That is when I decided to step back and look at both Manuel’s Tavern and the picture as two parts of a whole. Although there was not any outstanding evidence, I pushed myself to connect them in some meaningful way.

Another crucial aspect of this whole process was the peer editing. My classmate Ben provided me with points he thought I should look more into and gave me an overall assessment of my work. I have learned that just having someone else read through your work and reading their genuine impressions of it really do help. Another thing that I felt gave me a little trouble was revising the entire piece itself. Choosing which paragraphs to keep or change made me nervous but things like adding images or videos to my article inspired me to make the most of my resources. Of course, learning to properly cite my sources and give acknowledgement to the owner of the material was also a challenging but rewarding process.

If you would like to see my final product, click here.