The semester's almost over! The semester's almost over! Sorry....couldn't contain the joy. :) Every week, I try to find new things to say about how the time has flown and this is all I could come up with for this week.

Because our genres are finished, we were assigned to come up with the other accompanying parts of publications, like "About the Author" pages and "Acknowledgement" pages. My goal was to get those done this evening (Sunday) because I knew they wouldn't take very long at all. And I was right! They were very easy to do. Also, we had to peer review reference lists for others in the class. My goal was to get that done early, when I had an APA reference manual on hand or another document that had correct versions of citations in it.

This week, I had to think objectively about myself , which was fun. It was neat because I was actually doing stuff that people do when they publish real books and publications that other people will read. Also, I utilized the blogs from people who finished them last summer. I read the same pages from Mrs. McComas' blog and it helped, too, but I didn't have enough poetic inspiration to do as nice of a job as she did. I guess, too, with this week, I had to be super picky with reviewing Geneva's and Cindy's references lists, which I'm not used to. I had to do a lot of shuffling around and try to find out if they had used the right formats and stuff. Also, this week, I had to think critically about my MRP. I hadn't really thought before about someone else visitng my blog for the first time and what they would need to know to understand my position and purposes in doing this MRP.

So, I would say that this week, I really had a hard time with the process of reviewing others' references because I wasn't even sure if mine were right. And at one point, I thought, "Why does it really matter? Is Mrs. McComas really going to go through these reference lists with a magnifying glass to make sure that every element is where it's supposed to be, and if it's italicized or underlined and all of that?" When I realized that the answer to those questions were probably "Yes," I decided not to give up, but to make them as accurate as possible, because that's how we're supposed to. I understand that it's important for readers to understand where information came from and that we should be consistent with the formatting, but I think what drove me to really try to get details right about the citations and stuff was the thought that Mrs. McComas probably not only wants us to realize those things that I mentioned earlier, but also to get used to scouring information to figure out how to follow directions and follow them accurately....which is something that can be applied in all areas of life.

Whew. How about that wisdom? I feel like Dr. Phil! :)