To: Crystal Rodwell

From: Michael Bermejo

Date: March 15, 2022

Subject: Self-Reflection on Sleep Deprivation Lab Analysis

The purpose of this memo is to share how creating an outline to help organize my research can lead to an improvement in my writing decision and organization of thoughts. The course learning outcomes that were achieved through this writing process were enhancing strategies for reading, drafting, revising, editing; practicing using variable resources, online databases, and internet to locate for appropriate writing projects.

In the lab analysis labs, the task was to gather three lab reports and analyze the structure of each lab report and compare them.

Creating an initial outline is what helped me organize and understand my ideas while correctly categorizing them with specific key points that I wanted to make throughout my analysis. Creating an outline helped with enhancing my strategies for practicing using variable resources such as using the Lab Reports on the school database. Finding these lab reports helped with the overall understanding of finding new sources on reliable websites and being able to differentiate between different formats of papers and verifying there reliability in terms of content.

Through the drafting process, I was able to clearly identify the grammar and punctuation errors. Having my peers review my analysis and give feedback definitely helped with revising the essay. Looking at areas where I need details and areas that include too much details were key areas that my peers were able to identify. The goal was to give enough information for the audience to know enough to be able to understand the analysis. There were moments in my analysis in which I did not provide enough background for my audience to understand. My peers also helped with identifying phrases/words that were unnecessary in specific situations. For instance, using informal words such as very, things, not too mention, etc. Using informal language in a lab report analysis is not ideal because we are identifying structure and discussing formal reports.

When identifying multiple sources, an outline is ideal to organizing evidence and thoughts throughout all of them. Figuring out connections between them are simpler when they are written in an outline. Since I had chosen to compare the articles by each lab section, it was easier to include them in my outline. For example, I would note differences between the abstract of each and compare to see if the content fulfills its position in the lab. It was difficult to compare the three lab reports based on structure. At times I would end up analyzing the content which was not the purpose of the lab analysis.

For the future, I will continue working on my word choice and identifying what type of language is needed in different scenarios. Also work on identifying the type of audience since this will lead to the type of tone and formality needed in the paper.

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