The Learning Curve

This assignment turned out to be a bit more challenging than I had anticipated. I found it difficult to get in contact with people that I didn't know very well and to get good solid feedback from them. I tried three different methods of contacting people to review my essays, all with little or no success.

1. The first idea I had was to connect with people that I didn't know at all but that I knew had similar interests in the topics I had written about. Before my mission, I joined a Facebook group called "Many Are Sisters," a kind of sister missionary online support group where potential sisters could post questions about missions and meet other sisters who had served/would serve in their mission. It is a great way to reach out to other sister missionaries. I posted a link to my post about learning a new language on my mission and asked my fellow sisters to comment. Immediately I got several likes and a few comments, but nothing substantial. I learned that you have to ask people specifically, by name, and not just post a general request if you want people to respond. Good thing I decided to try another approach.

2. This time I tried networking through people to find other people with common interests or experiences. Hillary and I looked for people to share each other's posts with. This time I got a response and I really appreciated it. Hillary's sister commented on my post about receiving the news of my brother's cancer. She had had a similar experience and I appreciated what she said about it:

I absolutely agree with everything that's already been said. You have a great way of making me feel like I'm there with you in each of these pieces; but I felt like they all ended rather abruptly. I want to know more! I understand that sometimes writing past this point, especially in the piece about your brother, can be HARD, but it is always worth it to keep moving forward. Lindy (Hillary's sister).

This helped me recognize exactly why I don't want to continue with that blog post, but why it might be good to keep going anyways.

3. As a final attempt to get more feedback, I tried emailing a friend from high school who is a very talented aspiring writer. She has sent me many of her manuscripts of stories that she's tossing around. I have loved exchanging stories with her and getting feedback. Unfortunately, she has thus far been unable to respond.

Even though I didn't get the feedback I was hoping for, I found that I learned a lot from this experience. Next time, I would like to ask specific people specific questions to get a more specific answer (if any of that made sense!).