With April 14th right around the corner, I feel like I have so much work to do to prepare for submitting my final paper to the college board (Wow... I just realized that this will be the last piece of work to submit to the CB!). However, I am ready to put my game face on, hunker down, produce a killer paper/presentation, and end senior year with something significant before going to the college of my dreams (I have decided on Colorado School of Mines, for those who don't already know.)
Anyways, for this week's recap, I will begin with reflecting on the research paper commentary I so kindly received from Saara, Ved, and Rema. Overall, I still feel strongly about my lit review, as everyone seemed to be able to follow my argument easily. However, there were a few places that I received some helpful tips -- in terms of cutting words (although not a HUGE issue for me, considering I am not extremely far over the word count), Ved pointed out that I didn't need quite as much elaboration on each author's credibility. In some places, I could cut extraneous details without losing any of my own argument. In addition, when I transitioned from societal influences into branding, everyone recommended that I use a source within the transition, and I think that made the logical link a lot stronger. Lastly, I was able to clean up my significance a little bit with their advice (something I have struggled with throughout the process, so please keep that in mind as you are making comments on my paper).
Where I think the comments were the heaviest and most helpful was in the results and the discussion sections. In my results section, I think I did a good job coming to general conclusions and not saving the conclusions for the discussion section, but, in some places, I expanded upon those conclusions a little too much. I will cut words by minimizing some of those conclusions and saving the details for the discussion. Speaking of the discussion, from both Ms. Haag and my commenters, I feel like I got great feedback as to how to organize everything (save significance for the end, break up subheadings into different conclusions, etc.) and how to strengthen the connection between my findings and the lit review (unpack claims and conclusions a little more, find more sources). I have tried to expand upon the significance too, but, again, I would appreciate it if this week's commenters can look that over as well since I just wrote a lot of it from scratch this week and it hasn't been looked at by another pair of eyes.
In terms of how I feel about my paper scoring in the highest rubric categories, bear with me, but I am going to go through row by row:
- Row 1 - Scope, Significance, Gap: I feel like I am strong in creating a refined scope and clearly using the lit review to demonstrate a gap in the field that I am filling. However, I think I can probably make my significance sections stronger.
- Row 2 - Academic Conversation: I think that the academic conversation and relation of each perspective to each other is strong in my lit review.
- Row 3 - Sources: I think I do a good job demonstrating the credibility of each source and the methods (as in, how each researcher reached his/her conclusions) in my paper. However, something I struggled with was finding academic sources for makeup, so some may not be as credible.
- Row 4 - Method: I think I sufficiently explain how my method allows me to answer my research question at the beginning of my methods section.
- Row 5 - Results/Discussion: I think I use my data well to reach conclusions and have a sufficient analysis of limitations and avenues for future research/questions my research brings up. However, again, I have struggled with significance/implications.
- Row 6 - Data: I have struggled finding a statistical test or way to prove that there is no clear "winner" or most superior makeup brand, as the rankings were all over the place and participants didn't seem to consistently favor a specific brand. If I could get tips on a test I could use or way to more academically use my data to prove this, then that would be great.
- Row 7 - Design Elements: I feel like my tables, subheadings, and graph are all clear, especially with explanations included in the body of the paper, but please ensure that you understand them and comment if anything is unclear!
- Row 8 - Citations: I kept with APA citation style, did not use any long quotes, and focused on my voice driving the conversation and using other sources, as opposed to letting those sources take over.
- Row 9 - Wording: I tried to explain everything in terms that a non-expert in the field could understand. Again, please comment if anything is unclear though.
And, lastly for this post -- how I feel about the presentation. I clearly remember the uncomfortable feeling of presenting in seminar, and the frustration of memorizing a 10 minute presentation (and this is almost twice as long!). I am also concerned about getting my whole paper's worth of information into 15 minutes. However, I know what I am talking about -- I have been working on this project for the entire year! And, I think once I get into it, I will be able to condense and summarize certain sections, especially from the lit review. Until I actually start formulating a script and practicing, I won't know exactly where I am at in terms of time, but I am confident I will be able to figure it out (I mean, I have to...)
Happy editing, everyone! We are almost there!! :)
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Hey Audrey!
ReplyDeleteFirst, I'm so happy that you've found a college that you love! Colorado School of Mines is definitely lucky to have you. You're going to do great things in the future, I just know it.
Moving on to your paper, I definitely think that your lit review is solid. I like how easy it was to follow, and I think that you did a great job in tying together all of the necessary connections. I had a few problems with the structure of some of your sentences, but overall, there was nothing major to point out. Your Methods were great as well, though I was a little concerned by your justification of your sample size. Why were 50 women enough? An how can you say that they were representative of all make up users? If you can provide demographic and socioeconomic information to back up your claims, I think you'll be fine. Your results were slightly confusing. All of the information was there, but some of your sentences were a little too wordy, which made things confusing. I'd also work on your initial definition for "mismatch scores," because I didn't really get it until I read more of your paper. (The wordiness was a problem throughout the results section.) I know you were worried about your discussion, but I think it was solid! You did a good job including and connecting sources to lead to well thought out conclusions. However, you may want to consider synthesizing all of your conclusions at the end, to leave the reader with a final, succinct, and summarized idea. Overall, great work!!
Hi Audrey! Congratulations at Colorado School of Mines! That's an awesome college, but you are like the perfect student and could honestly succeed anywhere you chose to go.
ReplyDeleteOverall, I thought your paper was very well-explained and found that content and organization wise you nailed it. Your literature review established the gap and significance in an organic way. I feel like you sowed the seeds for why your research is important in the first paragraph itself. I felt like some of your evidence could be more explained like how the studies came to their conclusions, just to add to the credibility (ex: how did the Cancer Prevention Coalition come to their inaccurate conclusion about inorganic makeup being dangerous and how did the FDA, CDC, CIR debunk it). Specifics about what kind of studies these were, without going into too much scientific detail as your paper isn't really about that. I think when you talk about how some sources said that chemical additives allowed for makeup products to be more modifiable, it needed an example of how (like for different skin types or tones or something).
You did a good job justifying your methods, but didn't really justify why you chose the correlation analysis method of finding a R square value for your statistical method. I feel like your results section got confusing and some parts could be condensed into a table + reference to tables (the part about the NPMI scores). I didn't really understand the mismatch scores in general like Kimy. I also felt like there were no means of checking for validity, like maybe including a source of where you got your statistical definition from? I could be dumb though.
Other than that, I thought your discussion section was basically perfect! There were only nit-picky things about phrasing. You definitely established your significance well, and I loved how you ended it by generalizing your research to businesses and consumer market in general, it really linked the social and economic significance of your study.
I thought your paper was really great! Super interesting to read and it felt like it was very you- your voice was prominent and the topic itself is so Audrey! Good job!
Hey Audrey!
ReplyDeleteCongratulations once again on Colorado School of Mines! I can't wait to see what you go and do!
Your literature review, as you said in your blog comment, was solid and did a great job addressing everything it needed to. There really wasn't ever a point where I got confused or lost, and the entire thing flowed very well. I thought that maybe you question and the gap came a bit out of nowhere in the middle of a paragraph, but it still made sense and it was really readable.
The one thing, other than the justification of R squared values that Kimy and Sunskruthi mentioned, that confused me was your definition of quality. I feel as if it was never fully defined and I think that lead to some confusion when I got to your discussion section. Is quality the purity of ingredients? Is it how long it lasts? Is it how well it feels? There are so many things that quality can entail and I think if it isn't made clear then you fall into the trap of whether or not natural products could have better quality in some aspects and unnatural in others. I think this would be a simple fix to address, but would really help your paper. Also, I agree with Kimy that you need to do a slightly better job addressing exactly why 50 people is enough and why they are fully representative like you said they were.
Overall, your paper is looking really good and is super easy to understand! I think there are a few more changes that you might need to make, but other than that, it looks really great!