The Critical Report – How I am Going about it and a General Update on my Doings
May break is over too, meaning it is downhill from now on. Not sure how I feel about it, as I feel like I am lagging behind and burned out but at the same time I just want this to end. As the end approaches, I am working on preparing some action plans and some form of schedule in order to finish this project in a timely fashion and minimizing stress. As part of this process, we had to work on a draft of the critical report, which I did over May break.
In the beginning of the month, I started off by creating doing some research on how to go about a typical critical report and also created a framework (which came in very handy afterwards) of what will the critical report contain. This framework can be seen below:
As one can see, it is structured in the form of a ‘journey’ of how the project came about, with the additional points where a critical evaluation takes place. In addition, I am trying to create a comparison between the desk research and the results of the survey – whether the data collected substantiates what is being said.
Initially, I was writing this in the first person, however mid-way through I figured that as an academic piece of writing, writing in the first person sounds rather unprofessional, almost childish even. Found it a bit tough to start over, and I have difficulty writing in the passive form, but pulled through, and glad that I did. One thing I am sure about is that, unfortunately, as the deadline would approach, I will probably be more tired, and probably panicked as well.
On a different note, one of the concerns I had was how to “present” the content. Should it be like a typical dissertation? Should I make references to the literature review and survey findings? Following some helpful peer-to-peer discussions, we came to a conclusion, that as a piece of academic writing (unless you are writing a business plan) it should be structured similarly to a dissertation – i.e. abstract, introduction, literature review etc.
Below you can also find a link to my draft of my critical report. It is still a work-in-progress, and probably needs a lot of anything as well. However, feedback is greatly appreciated.
Lately, I noticed that I am struggling with writing more than usual. Trying not to blame lack of sleep and slowly returning to the ‘old routine’, but if this is the case, I hope I get over it soon, as it is stressing me out even more. As for the deliverable, I also finally got around to do some more research regarding the ‘look and feel’ of the app. It is still in the very early stages, and I should refer to the action plan we created earlier this year. It should help me in putting things into perspective for sure.
