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Hannah Rempel
Ms. Blandford
UWRT 1103-008
23 November 2015
Reflection
My Idea
When we first began trying to decide what our topics were going to be for the inquiry
assignment we were looking for something that we ourselves did not understand and for me my
immediate reaction was to speak about a different culture. I have always been the most interested
in religions because of my past courses that I took in high school. In the eleventh grade my world
religions course interested me more than any other class. In turn my immediate reaction was to
research the culture of a particular religion and Hinduism was something that I was always
fascinated by. My idea originally started as just researching into the culture of Hinduism, where it
all began to where it is now and how that has affected the followers culture. After the question
session occurred, my interest in the lack of knowledge about Hinduism by modern society had
potential to lead me towards a very detailed topic. After researching the culture only I felt that I
was finding good information. Essentially my idea began with the just learning about the Hindu
culture, and life. After the question session I looked to narrow my topic, but once I delved into the
research I found it easier to stick with a broadened topic so that I had more information to work
with. I think I teetered back and forth with the different idea because I was unsure of what kind of
paper I wanted to write. I think with a broadened topic I opened the door to finding more
connections between Hinduism and myself.
My Research
My research process began with me looking into the general basis of Hinduism; the rules
they follow, the gods that they worship, essentially the backbone or skeleton of their religion. I
wanted to look for sources that were all different and all came from a different part of the Hindu
culture. One of my sources was an interview with a man that was a Hindu pujari (priest). This

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was very valuable to me because he spoke about his life as a devoted Hindu follower and bridged
the gap I had of not understanding a personal perspective of the religion. A place that provided
little information for me was surprisingly the library database. I spent a great deal of time looking
through the archives to hopefully find information but in the end I turned up with no sources. I
think the database was not a good place to find evidence because most of the articles were just
informative baseline pamphlets with little in-depth knowledge of the true Hinduism. A source that
offered me a great deal of evidence was the bhagavad gita because it was the scripture of the
people, and it contained all of the verses that they would chant or pray with.
Effect of My Research on My Direction
When I first began researching I was very surprised by the lack of borders per se that
exist in the Hindu religion that leads to the lives of the followers being lead in many different
ways when taking in to account worship. There is a lot of gray area where the practicing Hindus
get to choose the idols they wish to worship to represent the Brahman, their god. It was not
something that I personally understood myself as a Christian, because there is essentially a single
manifestation of God, and his son Jesus. Of course many Christians lead their lives in different
manners but most of the time the way they choose to worship God is far different. I found that
there was a lot of information about the background stories of each god, how they had come to
earth and why they manifested the way they did. I was surprised with how much I had to dig to
find an example of the daily life of a Hindu person. There was often very little information,
instead of finding the culture of a Hindu follower I would receive examples of Indian culture,
which could be taken as the same but I did not want to make assumptions. My research had me
narrowing my topic at the beginning to the lack of modern knowledge of Hinduism in North
America. This topic was far too narrow, so I decided to return to my original topic. I think that in
the beginning it was not my topic that needed to be narrowed but rather the way I was
approaching the research and how I was researching it that needed to be better. In the end for my

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final conversation paper I stuck with the same topic because I worked on how I was researching it
leading me to better more informative sources.
Writing My Essay
My writing process was a little different than usual because I was starting with research
rather than just an idea. I had to build something off of information that I had found rather
starting my essay and then adding information to it. As I do with all essays I followed a similar
writing process of compiling all of my information, writing a rough draft and then editing. It was
slightly different with this essay because I had to find a way to incorporate my literacy memoire.
This took a lot more thinking and planning because I had to find connections between Hinduism
and myself. Writing tools that I used to help me achieve my desired project were the same as any
other. I was aware of how I was forming sentences, my punctuation and the validity of the points
I was making.
My Critique Group
Our critique groups were something that I actually came to enjoy doing because I felt
that in my first college writing class, I needed as much feedback as possible. I am not used to
receiving feedback from other people so often, so it took me a while to become comfortable with
sharing my work and letting others edit it. When I had done my question session with the entire
class I felt as though I was not receiving the feedback that I had wanted. I believe this is because
one of two reasons, the class did not find my topic interesting or they had little to no knowledge
of it. The latter is more than likely the prevalent reason, which made me more interested in the
little knowledge of Hinduism in the modern world or specifically North America. I knew that
looking into a religion that is mainly understood in a country across the world from where we are
would create that separation between what my peers knew, and what I was planning on learning.
Having this type of response from the class only made me more eager to learn so that I could

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share with them. When we went into groups to speak to each other about our proposals after the
question session I think it was great for me to just be able to share what I planned on finding out.
The group was able to help in pinpointing the main questions that I should answer, having their
opinion opened up a variety of things that I should learn. When it came time to peer review for
our final papers I really focused in on how I could take this almost research paper that I created
and form it into something that could relate to my literary memoire. This task was not easy but
talking with people and having them read my paper was very helpful. Initially when they had
known little about Hinduism they had no feedback for me as in the question session, but after
reading the beginning, rough stages of my paper they became more informed and in turn gave me
better feedback about where they thought I needed to improve and what else I could add. As I
continue to finish the final paper I continue to ask my teammates, Megan and Rachael, for
feedback because I know they can offer me a perspective I otherwise would not have. Overall the
experience has helped my entire process because I have changed the way I approach sharing my
work with others. Rather than being defensive and shy, I feel that I have become more open and
honest with myself and others so that collaboratively we can make each project I do, better.
Life as a Researcher
This inquiry project has been very different from other research projects that I have done
before because I had to delve further into the research than most other projects I have done before
in high school. Rather than finding just surface information I had to look for real tangible
evidence and facts of things and that not only made it harder, but more educational for myself.
One paper that was mandatory to write in high school was for my personal fitness class. I had to
choose an injury and write a paper on how that affects a certain population of people (I chose
athletes, of course). This paper took a similar amount of research as did the inquiry assignment
except there was never time for me to speak about myself despite the fact that I had suffered my
fair share of ankle injuries. So, for the first time with this project I felt that I was able to combine

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in depth research with something more personal. The project began with me learning about
something that I knew nothing about which later became me relating to it. For the first time I
could relate my research to myself. This was very interesting to do, and more rewarding in a way
because I was finding links between Hindu people and myself in places you would not expect.
Life as a Learner
This semester I feel like I have learned more about myself than I expected. I usually
approach writing classes such as this with a very straightforward outlook where every paper is
based off of some piece of writing and most times there is little personal aspects conjoining the
two. Through creating a portfolio, writing a literary memoire, completing an inquiry assignment
and all that came between I felt that I spoke of myself more than I had in any classes before.
There were three main things that I learned, I learned the importance of self-reflection, I learned
that rough drafts are just the beginning and I learned that just because something starts in one
way, does not mean it is going to end in that same way. A big part of this semester was spent
looking internally rather than externally. It was a very different experience to have to question the
things I believed and reflect on why I felt a certain way or why I had inclinations to do certain
things. Having to write in discussion posts a couple of times a week and respond to something
made me have to think rather than just type a couple of sentences and be done with it. The
daybooks taught me that writing down your thoughts is almost therapeutic in a way and can offer
me a form of solace when I am stressed or need something to take my mind off of everything
that is going on around me. I think because of these times for self-reflection I am a more aware
learner. The ability to be able to take a step back to try to understand myself is something that I
can take with me in all my courses, especially as my years in university progress and become
harder. The second thing I learned through our mandatory reading and personal experience was
that rough drafts are only the start of what we are going to write. I came here believing that the
rough drafts were a big part of how your final product is going to be, but that is not necessarily

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true. Through the reading Shitty First Drafts and the peer editing we did throughout the semester
I came to find that it was just all just a stepping stone. This leads me in to the final thing that I
learned which is that the beginning is usually far different from the end. My literary memoire was
huge in teaching me that what you think you are going to write or where you think you are going
to take a paper is many a times very different. Learning this is something I can some to take into
all of my classes so that I may understand the road to any finished product whether a lab, a
written essay or any other form of writing will take a very long time to evolve.