Let’s say, this unit was pretty short. And also a little not-my-kind. Not as fun as Rube Goldberg, but better than the constitution work. I personally thought this project was pretty easy, it wasn’t that hard. It was mostly writing the debate, doing some research, then more research about your side(pros and cons). After that? More debate practice and editing.

To me, this wasn’t that interesting. I was kind of annoyed when I heard my side, I didn’t quite like the topic I was doing, I didn’t like the side I was doing(pros: plastic bags), and I just can’t stand me doing all the editing and writing. Look, I was editing the whole thing for my group so that it’ll sound more like a debate and not like plain information out of nowhere. My group members were Emme, Alex, and Winston, and they did their work and I helped edit their work a bit.

First of everything, note-taking and research. The research came from the articles in our “research” folders. It was mostly articles about how plastic bags are bad(cons), not many pros, which made the pro side kind of hard. For me, I had to search it up on the computer to make sure if a piece of information was correct and accurate. Comparing the con information with the pro information, the two sometimes would clang together with the opposite meaning and information. Note-taking was with research, the same step, the same thing. Note-taking at first was just writing the pros and cons down in our reading notebook. After our sides were announced, we just started writing our information in the “without counterarguments” organizer.

After that, I didn’t quite talk to my partner very much. I just did my thing, and he did his thing. Winston sometimes would ask me some random things that I didn’t understand why, but usually, I just stayed quiet(sometimes) while everyone else talked about some other stuff. Everything turned out pretty good, though we didn’t discuss very much. After “without counterarguments”, we did with counterarguments. We copied and pasted our work into the organizer, my group didn’t quite say anything about changing it more like a debate, so I asked them for permission to edit their work. They didn’t mind, so I edited their work the best I can, also adding some status and better structure and wording whenever I can. If I can right now, I’d give myself a pat on the back and say, “Good job, Cindy, good job.”. I like the work I helped my group do, we could’ve been better, but this is all we’ve got.

I had a very hard time overcoming the fact that I was made to say plastic bags are “good”. I didn’t support plastic bags, completely, that’s what I thought first. But once I started researching, I realized, this is really hard to judge whether it is good or bad. Plastic bags are good in some ways, like that it’s sanitary and convenient. But it’s also bad in ways that it harm the environment and animals. I had to do my side, of course, and I just couldn’t stand it. I kind of understood my side once I did enough research, and I realized some things I didn’t realize before. These topics are quite complex if you dig deeper into them.

I had not liked this writing-and-reading project, let’s say, this is not something I’m interested in. I’m more into freewriting, which means I usually like to write everything from my imagination. I usually “get into” it more than writing things like persuasive essays, or debate essays. Though this unit was short, I think I already learned lots.