REFLECTION

Process and Feedback

At the beginning of the semester, I had trouble settling on a topic to research. When the initial research proposal was assigned, it was suggested that we choose a topic within or related to our major. As I was considering topics, my top choices were either Artificial Intelligence (AI) or Virtual Reality (VR). I decided to go with VR, because I thought the research would be more interesting as well as more entertaining. As I was outlining what exactly it was that I wanted to research, I realized that I was more interested in VR that I had seen portrayed in fiction than I was in current VR technology. So, I focused my research on the relationship between fictional VR and real VR. 

I was hoping to find sources that included some sort of analysis of the VR technology that appears in works of fiction, but I didn’t come across any. Existing literary analysis on fictional works that highlight VR focused on things like toxic masculinity and other social issues. Because of this, I decided to directly use fictional works showcasing VR as some of my sources, in addition to academic articles about VR. The fictional works that I ended up sourcing in my paper were the film The Matrix, and both the novel and film adaptation of Ready Player One. I thought this was a good variety of examples, as The Matrix came out in 1999, the Ready Player One novel was published in 2011, and the film released in 2018, so they cover almost 20 years of media. They also show two highly different versions of what VR technology could possibly look like in the future. The three academic articles that I found for my paper detailed different aspects of VR. One study looked into how VR could be used as a platform for searching through a vast amount of video data. Another article discussed an attempt to create a universal programming language that could be used for more easily creating VR games and applications. The third was a study on the social acceptability of VR glasses. Together, these three studies provides a variety of points of view on the topic of VR. Finally, I found a series of lectures on VR that I used for definitions and background information on the topic. I used these seven sources to analyze existing knowledge of VR, and to suggest a method for filling gaps in the current research. 

The feedback that I got on my essays was incredibly helpful. My professor provided a plethora of specific comments throughout each paper, along with final thoughts and feedback at the end. I was able to use the feedback to improve each essay that I wrote. I have had teachers in the past that provided skeletal feedback on my essays; they told me what I did wrong, but not how to fix or improve my writing. In these cases I felt that my growth as a writer was stunted. This class was different, though. My professor provided tons of comments: what I did wrong, what I did right, and suggestions for improvement. I appreciate this feedback and am glad to be able to apply it to my future writing.