Document their work using appropriate conventions (MLA).
My ability to adhere to MLA formatting and maintain proper sentence level structure has improved thanks to this class and the books read this semester. The classroom lessons on MLA formatting for paper setup and citations helped me greatly when writing essays for class, and the book, The Little Seagull Handbook used in class helped me keep up the proper MLA formatting in all my projects for this class and others in this semester as well. This book is something I plan to use for the rest of my years here. Local revisions, or changes in sentence level structure, has also been something I have improved on in this class. In previous years, this idea was an afterthought, where I would simply go through the essay and check for spelling errors. However, I have become much more meticulous with my work. I now comb through my essay checking for ways I can not only improve spelling, but grammar. This is to not only fix spelling errors, but make my ideas more clear and find a way I can express them with less words that are in turn more effective. One specific example of this practice in effect is my “Big Data” project. I had stayed up late to work on it, and wanted to go to bed, yet, I stayed up for at least another hour to carefully read through the essay to make sure it would make sense to any reader. This required reading it multiple times, both internally and outloud. This is a critical skill that unfortunately receives less development time than other areas, yet is extremely important, and will help me immensely.
