Peer review work was introduced for WP #1 and #3. Readings like “Note, React, Ask” were helpful tools to have when determining how to give feedback to fellow peers. In the Google Doc, under the writing process category, there are direct links to the feedback I had given to peers. Both links are copies I made of their documents to add comments, one is a draft and the other is an outline. For WP #1, I peer-reviewed the students' draft and the student I peer-reviewed for WP #3 didn’t have a draft so they submitted their outline that I gave feedback on. One of the group members in the peer group for WP #1 hadn’t given very useful feedback and wasn’t descriptive. From that, I learned to be more precise with what I’m saying. If I’m asking questions, I must be as clear as I possibly can be so I don’t confuse the writer.

I learned from the lack of sources in my WP #1 that I better not let that happen again for WP #3. I got onto the research part of the assignment almost immediately after I determined my topic. At first, I had a few good scholarly sources that had multiple points I wanted to touch on in the paper, with performed studies to back up the purpose of the journals. After that though, I was struggling to find more sources; my main issue was how to word phrases into the search engine to get an article related to the topic and enough of them to fit the required amount of sources. Formatting my thesis statement for WP #3 was a little challenging for me as well. I had to get out of that mindset that previous teachers had taught me: that a thesis statement needs to be one sentence and at the end of the introduction. During this class, however, we read pieces that not only had multiple sentences in their thesis statement but also weren’t always at the end of the first paragraph. It was a little troubling for me at first because there were many points in the paper that needed to be included in the thesis. For example, I first had to mention the reasons advertisements are sexist, as well as their negative impacts on certain groups of people. Then discuss the problem-solution point and include why this topic is relevant and important. It just took more time than usual to formulate.

There weren’t too many challenges I faced when citing sources, though I did have a wide variation of sources that made the requirements to cite them slightly different. I had numbers of authors in my sources ranging from one to three, and each of them have to be cited differently. I overcame that by double-checking Purdue Owl to make sure I’m properly citing them APA style. I also scheduled a 15-minute meeting with the professor to make sure my citations, mostly my in-text citations, were correct. The NS library was also helpful in terms of citing sources.