Section: 016
Total Reflection Word Count: 2,060

Total Final Drafts Word Count: 8,093

What I believe strengthens my op-ed to meet my initial main idea is my "We don't think" paragraph as it draws from personal experience and actions committed by every single person on a daily or non-daily basis. Through the help of my peers and instructor's comments, and personally red-penning my work, I was able to combine, rewrite, and take out sentences to better strengthen my argument quickly, as it's something I've struggled with in the past. I was able to overcome my tendency to over-detail and explain my ideas in this piece through the use of pathos as it resonates more with others and formulates a personal impact a little deeper than just shared facts. 

Overall, writing this piece made me think back to all the times I've done something unconsciously, and, from what I gathered through peer and instructor reviews, it did the same for them, too. It's similar, as well, to the autoethnographic essay that I also wrote in this class as it's also a reflection piece for myself and what I'm realizing as an environmentalist, plus what and how I hope to help others realize the same ideas too.

Full honesty: I am not the biggest fan of group projects. I prefer to do things in my own way, at my own speed. This group project, while a little wonky here and there, was nice in a way but also a little stressful.

When we first conjoined as a group, we were all equally sharing potential ideas with each other, elaborating on them with the help of each other by asking clarifying questions, offering examples, and detailing scenarios if our proposal and project were to actually happen. When writing out the grant, my team and I split the work based on the number of questions there were and which questions we felt confident answering. To be fair, we were also trying to "beat the clock" by just doing the work and communicating enough because we also were trying to compensate for the other work this and other classes offered. In the end, because of the way we did things, there was a bit of an unbalanced mix of knowledge and direction surrounding our proposal. However, because of that unbalance, we did our best to communicate more intentionally and in-depth on what needed to be done to improve our grant, make it more specific and detailed, and, importantly, how we can help each other given our limits, for this proposal and with other academic impacts.

We didn't conduct as much research as we should have, though I didn't realize we needed to do some for it. The majority of our work comes from conceptualization, as well as observations of our campus community. If we were to have done the research, though, we would search to find data surrounding waste assortment statistics, intensely on the Berkeley community, and maybe nation and worldwide. Along with that, we could have researched information on the health and or individual impacts of improper waste assortment to show the deep connection between the two. This data would give players and listeners an overview as to why waste assortment, no matter the place or time, is so crucial to ourselves, others, and our environment.

Given the fact that I want to work in the environmental field, this type of writing is useful to me by knowing how and when to be specific with my explanations, intentions, and reasonings. I want to help people in any contextual format, and they only way I can help people is to be specific, do the research as to how I can, explain and show my work in a conceptual and dynamic way, and also collaborate with others to make the impact greater.

This course had me in survival mode; I had full capability to write, do, and use whatever I wanted for my major and minor writing assignments. While there was guidance and support offered, this class truly showed me that my writing, along with my life, is controlled only by myself and no one else. I’ve always been the type of person to want a structural system and or examples to refer to when completing anything, I like knowing there is a goal. In writing, and life in general I’ve come to realize, there aren’t always structures to go off of because things are constantly changing and not the same. For example, writing my research paper - the first one ever for me - I was almost going into it blindly even after reading examples in and out of class because my topic was so niche and was an interest unique and viewed in my own personal way. I was terrified on what is the right or wrong question to analyze, what sources are the best or worst, how do I conclude my little-to-no findings, and more. Writing it knowing that there is nothing comparable to it felt daunting and pressuring to make it the best research paper, and overall writing assignment, I could’ve possibly created. Weeks prior to submitting it, I was fighting against myself, my own confidence, and time itself to flesh out my research paper and complete it because there was no structure and rather more freedom. Too much freedom in writing, I at least notice and feel, can lead to the desire to be “perfect” in all areas. Especially, too, with the topic of environmentalism, I was so fearful that even as a Conservation and Resources Studies major I would not bring justice and righteousness to the field in which I desire my career and work to. While I know many areas of the environment and the work needed to be done, I was scared of sharing, writing, or saying the wrong thing because I wanted to make sure I got everything correct in its vast subject. In short, there was too much free will to do what I wanted that I didn’t even know what that was and it challenged me to the highest amount.   

   Looking back at each major assignment, I was trying my hardest to fight through the challenges. In my personal essay, I despised writing about myself because there’s only so much in my life that I can and want to write about. My op-ed piece I struggled with formatting and sharing my opinion thoroughly and concisely since it’s my own opinion and no one else’s. In my grant proposal group project, there were so many pieces and brainstorming needed for a simple communal education idea that I and my group got lost in the process trying to figure something out, resulting in near incomplete and unevenly team-efforted work. For my research paper, there’s so much to utilize, so much to discuss, and much to take in and it felt too big of a task to feel comfortable starting and finishing it as is because there is so much personal drive and inquiries to go off of. It seems that no matter how much guidance that can be given in a class that is meant to offer unlimited creativity and personal touches, I find myself striving to make my products be like, as well as work in a structural way, something it doesn’t need to be: someone else’s.

Individuality is not my strong suit, as I’ve projected throughout this reflection - as I write this I’m thinking “I wonder what my other peers’ are writing in their reflection. What do I do to make it like theirs?” A referencable structure that I can go back to and be inspired by helps immensely. This class, though, showed me that that can’t always be the case given that outside of classes and academia, there is no set structure to live off of and only your own that are personally created. As stressful as it can be, it’s a challenge I have to push through - thankfully though, I can say I’ve started to combat the challenge because of this class. The little structure with much freedom to create compositions truly made me struggle, as mentioned earlier, in more ways than one, in and outside of class. Writing is a process, a long struggle in its many parts, not an easy feat to do, and no writing product or style is the same. No structure and or plan can formulate or predict the final outcome and yet you just have to roll with whatever you’ve got whether you’re comfortable with it or not. While I’m still trying to adhere to all this class has brought onto me mentally, emotionally, and creatively, I’m grateful for what I’ve produced and learned, about myself as a writer, environmentalist, and human being.