Reflection of Personal Citation Work

While reading Skimming the Surface, one of the main ideas I took note of was the four main categories that students use to cite sources: Exact Copying, "Patch Writing", which is essentially exact copying with extremely minuscule changes, Paraphrasing, and Summary. I like to think that over my years of education I have progressed from exact copying all the way to summary, though I will admit that I am guilty of paraphrasing at times. During my time in high school, when asked to cite a source, I would usually read the source without fully understanding what it meant, copy and paste it to my work, and change the wording to make it look like my own. By the time I got to be a junior, I had moved on from that and practiced truly using my own words to write. I'm still in the process of practicing this, but I feel myself slowly getting better with each paper I write.