What I Learned

            The documentary project was an unquestionable learning experience in all aspects of writing. From rhetorical context all the way to mechanical issues, the project was a learning experience. In previous writing classes, I have had the opportunity to write summaries. After writing this documentary summary, I feel as if my other summaries were incorrect. If I recall correctly, I remember including some analysis within my old summaries. dr. kyburz constantly drilled in our heads that summaries can not contain any analytical information, so my eyes were constantly on the lookout for analysis. Also, I learned that this assignment asked for critical thinking skills. Not only did I have to focus on excluding analysis, but I also had to worry about not including too much or including details that in reality are not important in the summary. Creatively, stronger verbs to emphasize the film's impact was also needed to strengthen my paper. As far as genre goes, this was difficult. Because  I could relate to the topic at hand to an extent, it was difficult to not analyze and include emotion within my paper. I learned that the genre does set the tone of your own writing whether it's noticed or not. Mechanically, the use of present tense verbs was a must in order to keep the paper on a consistent path. Overall, the assignment did well in teaching me what summary really is. Although i had prior experience, I felt like I actually learned how to do it for the first time and correctly as well.