In my last post I wrote about my increased confidence following my first year of blogging. Perhaps it was too much to expect that my academic writing might miraculously appear (not improve or develop but appear) during the same timeframe. So, when the opportunity arose to participate in an optional #acwri summer school offered by my #mscde programme I jumped on board without hesitation for two reasons: firstly, the tutor was someone I admire and whose retirement is imminent so I might not get the chance again, and secondly, after a year of successful engagement and learning with my peers, (whether it’s called networked learning, community of practice, social connectedness, affinity group – I touched on the challenges of names in a recent post) I was keen to engage with new peers and hopefully some old ones (and no, I’m not referring to age!), all of us keen to improve or develop our academic writing.
Week 1 focused on preparing to write and it was eye opening for me to see how many of us lacked confidence in our writing ability to the point of calling it a barrier. Since I was on holiday that week I didn’t engage in all the activities but thoroughly enjoyed practicing freewriting in the knowledge that my appalling handwriting was justified owing to a time limitation (10 minutes maximum). A key takeaway was that I often come up with ideas for all sorts of things during my 30 minute walk with my dogs, but then promptly forget whatever it was. My new practice is to have a notebook and pen handy and get the stuff out of my head and into the notebook via freewriting without delay. It’s taking some practice, that’s for sure, but definitely a beneficial technique. The other key takeaway from week 1 was to practice using a template to analyse an academic paper. Over the last year certainly, I have spent copious amounts of time reading papers, highlighting sections, taking notes but ultimately not always having a clear understanding of what the paper was about. This template has changed my approach and while I won’t use it for every paper I read, it will come in handy to analyse papers that I struggle with.
Weeks 2 and 3 naturally enough focused on writing and at this stage it was clear that some serious writing had to be done and shared with a peer to provide feedback on each other’s work. In truth, this is something I tend to practice for assignment work since every mark counts and a reviewer always spots something that the writer didn’t. The final deliverable for the summer school was to write an abstract for a real journal and address blind feedback on the draft from three peer reviewers on the course. I really enjoyed formulating feedback on the abstracts I was given and in a sense it was like marking student work. I hope my peers found value in my comments as I did in theirs but don’t know if it was the same three people. At any rate, the process of narrowing down the list of potential journals, understanding their aims and scope along with the guidelines for authors was a very valuable experience. As someone who has never submitted an article to a journal, going through the practice certainly built my confidence and helped me appreciate the nuances that exist between journals and indeed publishers.
The question now is whether I might be able to write an 8000 word review essay based on my 2500 word assignment from last semester. I think it’s worth a try and will be an interesting personal project over the coming months. Getting it accepted for publication – well, that might be a whole different matter.
Until next time.
Sandra
Sandra Flynn 