Writing Reflection

    This is the first time I have ever had to write a summary about a documentary. Usually all the summaries I do are about books or articles, so this is new experience for me. I found it was easier to write about a documentary, but harder to revise than a book. When I am watching the documentary I feel as though I should include every scene in my summary making my summary longer than it usually would be for a summary about a book or article. Condensing my information is really hard for me because once I get in the mind frame of explaining everything thoroughly, it is really difficult to get out of that mind frame. I do not necessarily think it is a bad thing to be descriptive and detailed, but when my summary is two pages longer than the suggested length requirement, it does not help anything. When I was watching the documentary Blackfish I wanted to provide the readers of my summary enough details that they could visualize the documentary, without actually viewing it.  I think being very descriptive is a good thing for the field I plan on going into, criminal justice, because police reports should be as descriptive as possible. It is harder for me to not explain everything than it is to explain everything that I am seeing. 

    Another process I had trouble with was making the tenses line up. As I am watching the film, I noticed I always put the verbs of my paper in the past tense because I already saw it. I spent a solid hour or so going back through my draft correcting all my verbs to present tense. If i would have focused more on putting my writing in present tense as I was writing, I could have saved a lot of time on the editing process.

    When I get my degree and a job as a police officer, the skill of being able to describe what I am thinking onto paper is very important. In the criminal justice field it is very important to be very descriptive. Practice makes perfect and practicing my writing skills, will ultimately strengthen them.