The other I was watching tv and a commercial for printer ink came on. The main message they were giving to their viewers is that this printer alerts the owner when they’re low on ink and automatically ships ink to them because “you don’t always get it right the first time.” As the voiceover said this line, it showed an intern bringing a document to his boss and she just took her red marker all over his work. Ironically, it’s the same in writing. With the collaboration that the intern had with his boss on his work, he was able to come back with an even better graph that she, his boss may or may not correct.
Collaborative Writing
One of the topics that were mentioned in the What Collaborators say about collaborative writing that I related to was the topic of the younger writers who went to their supervisor during the planning phase had a different outcome in their presentation phase to those who did not. I found it pretty cathartic that that thought used for writing, can also be used, in my case, in math. In all the years that I have taken and re-taken any kind of math, I find that when I start doing, for example, homework on my own, I tend to take longer than if I started it after a couple of refreshed practice questions. Now that I am in, what I hope to be the actual last time I ever have to do the math for a grade or credit, I am learning that even though I hate the subject, when it comes to my “presentation” stage or my ability to work out math problems on my own, I have a better outcome if I ask questions or refresh on my “planning” phase.
Acknowledging Failure
Alexus Yeakel’s article, essentially explains what actually happens when we, as academic writers, revise and edit it makes us better writers in the long run. “Failure is awesome because so many amazing things come from failure.” One thing that’s ironic is that the other day I was talking about how English was not my best subject in high school. I honestly had no interest in the subject during those 4 years. I was never a ‘good’ writer, and I honestly never put my eggs in that basket. It wasn’t until I started college, that I realized that I actually might like English. Writing papers in college, I find to be way more freeing than in high school. Notice I said freeing instead of easy, writing is never easy. I did however, breathed easy when Yeakel mentioned that becoming a good writer takes time and there is no “I’ve made it to the top of the mountain” in terms of writing, it really made me feel better about my writing status. In this sense, it almost makes failures and mistakes an essential step in the writing process.
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