For this process, I made sure to focus heavily on my quotation and use of them in my They Say, I Say portions of my essay. Throughout my writing for this essay, I made sure that my quotations were accurate to my thesis and drove home the point I was trying make that, Technology has its benefits and negatives but its all about how you use it. I used a lot of I Say in my essay trying to weave in my own experiences to my writing and show how this is not just something observed in the text. I might want to change how I did my conclusion paragraph for this essay. I was not very focused on my conclusion and I did not feel very strong about it. I think I could improve on that part of my writing by looking at different templates on how to correctly structure conclusion paragraphs. This writing process different from the first writing process because this time I utilized the feedback given to me better. In the first writing process, I did not use the help of my peers very well when revising my essay and it was not as good. This time around, I used the help of my peers to better articulate my words, increase the flow and revise the thesis of my essay. I think the main reason my conclusion was not as good is because I did not focus enough time to it and I just procrastinated and put it off until the morning the essay was due. I think if I put more effort into my conclusion paragraph then my essay would flow a lot better and sound a lot nicer in the end.
Considering my recent work and experience in this class in comparison to the essays I used to write I’d say I’ve improved in multiple areas, ones I didn’t even know needed improvement. Even very simple corrections such as how to cite correctly, block quotes, page headers, MLA format, are things I’ve learned how to do with the help of my peers. Which is another helpful tool. Although I like the use of peer review, I do wish we utilized that time more towards the end of our final rough drafts, just so that they can catch any last fixes, instead of critiquing work that is nowhere near finished anyways. Another new tool I’ve learned is writing in chunks. I don’t mind sitting down and writing a whole essay in one night, my thoughts are all there at one point and time and I don’t have to try and remember where I left off. But overall the use of having set due dates with word count is something I will set goals for myself in the future, even if the professor doesn’t exactly have that. It’s still something useful I’d like to use. I also have written most of my essays on books before, not articles, where the work is very clear and defined because of the limited space available. It’s been an adjustment but I’ve enjoyed the difference. In specifics to writing and technology, I believe I’ve come to multiple conclusions. Technology not being just devices and screens, but literally tools to improve our writing. Technology like utilizing a whiteboard and markers to map out our thought process, or even my computer to have multiple tabs open, such as the articles, rubric, peer reviews, etc. In comparison to the last essay we wrote in this class, I feel as though I’ve got the hang of it and it has become easier to flow with my thought process and work since I’ve done it once before.
For the writing process, with the deadlines that were put up, I was able to not stress and procrastinate writing my essay. Without having the deadlines and getting the papers to be 400-500 words and then having check ins, I believe that I would’ve procrastinated the whole essay. Before, I used to draw up my outline in class when the paper was announced and then procrastinate everything until the night before it was due. I have realized since coming to college that procrastinating and saving everything until the day before it is due is not the way to go. I learned overall that I need to take my time, and make sure I space out everything to be able to accomplish and finish writing my essay to its greatest potentional. Going forward with how I write my papers overall, I’m going to come up with check in points for myself to make sure I am completing my work to its fullest potentional, whether that is stopping at a certain point to make sure I have what I need, or even just looking over my paper and editing it before I move onto actually finishing it.
This project made me realize that coming into this class, I was not preparing myself the way I should’ve when writing essays. In the past, I would occasionally go over my paper and edit it, but sometimes I wouldn’t even make it thar far and would just hand it in. However, I have now realized the main importance of going over my papers, so now, I make sure to go over my essay a few days before it is actually due to make sure everything flows, and I have no grammar or spelling mistakes, or even some sentences that are just too long.
This class has pushed me to involve more specific and complex ideas than I have previously used. Compared to high school, college involves more time and preparation to produce a well-thought-out paper that goes into depth on difficult topics. The essay that we wrote for project 2 was my first time ever using a Barclay formula. Even though I struggled with this new format at first, I was able to get the hang of it by rewriting my essay three different times. Due to the essay’s I have written in this class being more difficult, I have been able to pace myself and provide a deeper meaning in my paper. The specific deadlines with key dates were able to keep me and my work in check, as well as to avoid procrastinating. Something that made me feel successful when I was writing was when I provided a deeper meaning on my paper. The first essay we wrote made me feel as though I was just stating the obvious, but this paper made me feel like I was able to add on to something that is important to talk about in the real world. Moving forward, I plan on finding a theme and creating a thesis that I can easily work with. I had been super behind on this essay because I decided to ramble on about a useless topic that had sentences in which kept repeating the same thing. By the time we were supposed to have 1200 words, I only had 822. Something that I did that was different this time around was that I had three people outside of class peer review my paper and give me helpful insight on what I could do better. Overall, I plan on striving for an essay that is constantly jumping around, rather an essay that I straight to the point and leaves readers wanting more.
I feel like my writing process this time went a little smoother and allowed my to approach my work with a better eye. When writing the drafts I was mainly trying to get down my ideas and the bigger parts before fleshing them out into more specific points. In my head I had and idea of exactly how I wanted to go about writing my essay. I knew when I was agreeing and when I was disagreeing. When revising I took more time than I did on the last essay trying to make sure that what I was saying made sense as well as listening to some of the feedback that I was given in peer review. However I still did procrastinate a lot of my writing and I wished that I hadn’t and tried to approach the essay earlier than doing most things last minute. However it was still better than my procrastinating on the last project. I’m going to try to sent aside specific blocks of time that I will focus on writing on my paper for the next project as to keep me on track and not lose myself to. procrastination. Although I did meet all of the deadlines and turned in my work on time so I am not worrying about that. I think next time I want to try and make an outline of my work and ensure that I keep on track with how I approach the essay to ensure that I don’t go off on unnecessary tangents that don’t aid my paper. When I go on tangents I usually lose where I wanted to actually go in the essay, and to combat this I may list out some bullet point on ideas and points I want to consider when writing and include in my essay.
My process for writing my essay was more spread out and detailed than my last project. I focused on getting my quotes or ideas and brainstormed them. After brainstorming, I was able to make my sentences sound more fluid. It also helped looking back to the prompt and outline often to see what I was missing or even needed to improve. I took more time with each paragraph and made sure it was detailed and included what I was missing from my last project. I felt like I took more advantage of my peer review and my revisions went very smoothly. Hearing my classmates thoughts on what I could do to make my essay stronger was very helpful for revising. I also used tips from the last peer review before starting my essay. I still need to work on procrastinating and when I set a time to work on my essay, to actually do it efficiently. I put a lot more time and effort into this project. I spend more days revising compared to last time where I only used one day. I felt like I put more thought into even simple things like my sentence structure. My essay was successful because I was able to compare a lot of my paragraphs back to my thesis sentence. Going forward I need to stop procrastinating and focus on being in the moment with less distraction. I also feel like I could do deeper reading and instead of just pulling points from the quotes I am using but referring to the whole text throughout. I think that I need to work on reading the directions more thoroughly instead of writing and then looking back and having to fix a lot. I also feel like I could use more advantage of the class time given to us to write instead of being distracted.
A success that I would like to spotlight from this project is that I felt like I did a much better job going in-depth on all of the quotes that I picked. Unlike in the last paper (Project 1) where I basically just summarized what the quotes were saying rather than going in-depth and pulling a deeper meaning from them. This time I feel like I did a good job reaching in and pulling out and analyzing the deeper meaning behind each quote. Soothing that I would change or adjust going forward is listening to peer review more. I did take it into consideration quite a bit however, there was a lot that I just shrugged off and honestly, I’m not too sure how much of that is ok and how much is not. I know the paper the best because I wrote it so at what point do I stop making every change that is suggested, because I wrote the paper I probably know what’s best for it but how do I know which suggested changes will be best for it?
When creating my essay, I found myself often alone in my room simply talking to myself. Allowing my writings to enter a conversation with whomever I may be writing in conjunction with or against allows me to understand my ideas more fully and makes them more robust. I’ve been able to do this for all my essays so far here at UNE, but I believe this last essay was different. I cannot recall a time when I had to so deeply consider my ideas and quotes for my essay, to carefully construct the flow of my paragraphs and sentences, and allowed myself time to connect on the essay, with my ideas. I was intently focused on the construction of the Barclay paragraph, something that is new to me but something that I will continue to use for a long time in all my essays. I believe I was able to use the Barclay paragraph to great success, and that being able to use it in such a way highlights my evolution from a simple high school student into an intellectual College student. Compared to my last essay, this one is more advanced, more built upon than the last, though my previous essay helped to structure parts of this new essay. In the context and theme of the course I’m taking, this essay illustrates my stance on the subject matter the most. Writing is a technology, so I understand the effects modern technology is having on it, and I believe this essay shows those opinions I hold. Lastly, through the readings I’ve done for this essay, primarily from Carr, I’ve found myself wishing to use the practice of “deep reading” that Carr has brough up, and I believe that this essay has changed the way I want to interact with readings.
To begin my process of drafting Project #2, I reread the texts we have dove into over the course of the semester and picked the two that were compelling to me and where I could see primordial stages of them speaking to one another in some way. Once I had my texts picked, I brainstormed some of my own examples of how I align myself with the internet and how I use it in my everyday life. This essay was quite unique in comparison to other writing projects I’ve done in the past as I don’t think I’ve ever been asked to have an isolated conversation with only two other pieces of text. However, this constraint made me think more critically and analyze each text deeply and thoroughly in order to discover the areas where the two authors were communicating with one another. Developing this skill throughout this project has made me feel like a better writing. During this project, I thought I did a good job finding strong quotes that had a lot of meaning and enhanced my argument. I devoted a lot of time to rereading my chosen texts and marking areas where the authors agreed, disagreed, or complicated the other’s argument. I also focused on understanding and applying Barclays formula and I feel there were areas of my paper where I did this effectively with Turkle and Carr. When it comes to areas of improvement, going forward, I would like to devote more time to the final revision process. I feel as though I don’t struggle to hit the main points of the rubric and create a strong foundational essay, yet sometimes I feel as though my writing lacks some of the tiny details. I think if I devoted more time to final read throughs where I can pick my essay apart and get nitpicky, I could enhance my writing to a new level.
My process for this essay was a lot slower than my process for project one. I found that I was second-guessing my thoughts a lot on this project, and this made it hard for me to get into a flow of writing to hit the word counts for the drafts. I felt I had to put a lot more thought into what I was writing, whereas on the last project the ideas were coming to me very quickly. While this was a setback during the drafting process, it later proved to be something very beneficial during the revising, as I didn’t have to make any large mechanical changes to my paragraphs, during the revision process, I spend a lot of time placing the two authors I used into conversation, as that was the criticism I received the most in peer review. I wasn’t engaging deeply enough with the texts that I chose, and it led to my paragraphs not being fully formed. The most helpful thing I did to improve upon this is draw out diagrams of what the authors I chose were saying. I then connected them and showed where they clashed. Eventually, I added myself into the diagram, and how my thoughts and perspective worked with the ideas that I was using from my sources. Putting these ideas into a visual form helped me to go back and revise my paragraphs and add the connections I made into words. I found that I struggled with the Barclay’s paragraph method, specifically the last step of tying both of my quotes and my own thoughts together. I found my own experiences were getting lost, and another large part of my revision process was making sure I corrected this mistake. Another area of improvement that I will make in the future is not feeling the need to over-explain my thoughts, as it leads to very wordy and complicated sentences that diminished the quality of my writing.
After taking proper time to reflect on Project 2, I can say with full confidence that my process was a whirlwind. Frankly for the first few renditions of the projects such as the 400- or 500-word blocks, I was just trying to maximize word count. I really did not place much emphasis on what I was putting down on the paper if I had enough words to shut down my computer and call it a night. It wasn’t until I had completed my ~1200-word count draft and had it reviewed by my peers that I realized what I had been doing was poor. My ideas were all over the page and had no apparent connection even within the paragraphs. The peer review exercise opened my eyes to the crappy job that I had done on those first drafts. After I had gotten my criticism, however, I was kicked into high gear and really buckled down on my paper, revising entire paragraphs to better my overall paper. With this being said, I think my overall effort compared to Project 1 was better. Similarly to project 2 the first drafts were just trying to get words down on the paper. I did not see however the drive in my final draft that I had seen in project 2. I think I was really focused on my revision, using the suggestions from my first essay in project 1 and the suggestions from my peers to formulate an essay that flows from top to bottom. I do feel as though procrastination and distraction are something that I need to work on for the next project. When completing this essay, I would oftentimes sit in front of the televiosn with my computer on my lap and my phone in my hand bouncing between the three when I felt like it. This provided a serious distraction and procrastination that if had been eliminated would have allowed me to spend more time dedicated to my essay.
After a few short revisions, I went back to the video and audio that Professor Miller sent out about paper one. There were a few things he had mentioned about my first paper I missed in the original writing of drafts for this paper that I spent some time reworking and adding to make sure they were there for this one. Hopefully I adjusted the ones he pointed out in the correct fashion. Outside of the revisions he sent, there were a few things I still would’ve wanted to work on. First, was my thesis. I’ve written so many of these and each time they are different, it is hard to start a new one without making them the same style as the last. I don’t think one was too bad, maybe a little vague for the purpose of using only 2 articles to write about, but I digress. The body paragraphs seemed strong in their own ways but looking back on a few parts, I either rambled a bit too much here or I cut it off a bit too abruptly on others. In my eyes the pace seemed ok, but I did change a couple parts around. One paragraph was talking about one topic and similar info reappeared later on, so I made some minor adjustments and brought those two together to make one larger paragraph. Natalie and Mae also helped when it came to where I needed to focus on revisions. They both had said that some of the quotes I brought in were strong and helped with making my argument distinctly mine and had some good ideas of what could be added or removed. Going into the final paper(s) of the class, I think I will take some more time on the parts that will be for connecting information in between main points. Sometimes I find myself adding info that is a good filler, but not always exactly what I’m trying to get from my thoughts and onto the paper.
12 thoughts on “JOURNAL # 22”
For this process, I made sure to focus heavily on my quotation and use of them in my They Say, I Say portions of my essay. Throughout my writing for this essay, I made sure that my quotations were accurate to my thesis and drove home the point I was trying make that, Technology has its benefits and negatives but its all about how you use it. I used a lot of I Say in my essay trying to weave in my own experiences to my writing and show how this is not just something observed in the text. I might want to change how I did my conclusion paragraph for this essay. I was not very focused on my conclusion and I did not feel very strong about it. I think I could improve on that part of my writing by looking at different templates on how to correctly structure conclusion paragraphs. This writing process different from the first writing process because this time I utilized the feedback given to me better. In the first writing process, I did not use the help of my peers very well when revising my essay and it was not as good. This time around, I used the help of my peers to better articulate my words, increase the flow and revise the thesis of my essay. I think the main reason my conclusion was not as good is because I did not focus enough time to it and I just procrastinated and put it off until the morning the essay was due. I think if I put more effort into my conclusion paragraph then my essay would flow a lot better and sound a lot nicer in the end.
Considering my recent work and experience in this class in comparison to the essays I used to write I’d say I’ve improved in multiple areas, ones I didn’t even know needed improvement. Even very simple corrections such as how to cite correctly, block quotes, page headers, MLA format, are things I’ve learned how to do with the help of my peers. Which is another helpful tool. Although I like the use of peer review, I do wish we utilized that time more towards the end of our final rough drafts, just so that they can catch any last fixes, instead of critiquing work that is nowhere near finished anyways. Another new tool I’ve learned is writing in chunks. I don’t mind sitting down and writing a whole essay in one night, my thoughts are all there at one point and time and I don’t have to try and remember where I left off. But overall the use of having set due dates with word count is something I will set goals for myself in the future, even if the professor doesn’t exactly have that. It’s still something useful I’d like to use. I also have written most of my essays on books before, not articles, where the work is very clear and defined because of the limited space available. It’s been an adjustment but I’ve enjoyed the difference. In specifics to writing and technology, I believe I’ve come to multiple conclusions. Technology not being just devices and screens, but literally tools to improve our writing. Technology like utilizing a whiteboard and markers to map out our thought process, or even my computer to have multiple tabs open, such as the articles, rubric, peer reviews, etc. In comparison to the last essay we wrote in this class, I feel as though I’ve got the hang of it and it has become easier to flow with my thought process and work since I’ve done it once before.
For the writing process, with the deadlines that were put up, I was able to not stress and procrastinate writing my essay. Without having the deadlines and getting the papers to be 400-500 words and then having check ins, I believe that I would’ve procrastinated the whole essay. Before, I used to draw up my outline in class when the paper was announced and then procrastinate everything until the night before it was due. I have realized since coming to college that procrastinating and saving everything until the day before it is due is not the way to go. I learned overall that I need to take my time, and make sure I space out everything to be able to accomplish and finish writing my essay to its greatest potentional. Going forward with how I write my papers overall, I’m going to come up with check in points for myself to make sure I am completing my work to its fullest potentional, whether that is stopping at a certain point to make sure I have what I need, or even just looking over my paper and editing it before I move onto actually finishing it.
This project made me realize that coming into this class, I was not preparing myself the way I should’ve when writing essays. In the past, I would occasionally go over my paper and edit it, but sometimes I wouldn’t even make it thar far and would just hand it in. However, I have now realized the main importance of going over my papers, so now, I make sure to go over my essay a few days before it is actually due to make sure everything flows, and I have no grammar or spelling mistakes, or even some sentences that are just too long.
This class has pushed me to involve more specific and complex ideas than I have previously used. Compared to high school, college involves more time and preparation to produce a well-thought-out paper that goes into depth on difficult topics. The essay that we wrote for project 2 was my first time ever using a Barclay formula. Even though I struggled with this new format at first, I was able to get the hang of it by rewriting my essay three different times. Due to the essay’s I have written in this class being more difficult, I have been able to pace myself and provide a deeper meaning in my paper. The specific deadlines with key dates were able to keep me and my work in check, as well as to avoid procrastinating. Something that made me feel successful when I was writing was when I provided a deeper meaning on my paper. The first essay we wrote made me feel as though I was just stating the obvious, but this paper made me feel like I was able to add on to something that is important to talk about in the real world. Moving forward, I plan on finding a theme and creating a thesis that I can easily work with. I had been super behind on this essay because I decided to ramble on about a useless topic that had sentences in which kept repeating the same thing. By the time we were supposed to have 1200 words, I only had 822. Something that I did that was different this time around was that I had three people outside of class peer review my paper and give me helpful insight on what I could do better. Overall, I plan on striving for an essay that is constantly jumping around, rather an essay that I straight to the point and leaves readers wanting more.
I feel like my writing process this time went a little smoother and allowed my to approach my work with a better eye. When writing the drafts I was mainly trying to get down my ideas and the bigger parts before fleshing them out into more specific points. In my head I had and idea of exactly how I wanted to go about writing my essay. I knew when I was agreeing and when I was disagreeing. When revising I took more time than I did on the last essay trying to make sure that what I was saying made sense as well as listening to some of the feedback that I was given in peer review. However I still did procrastinate a lot of my writing and I wished that I hadn’t and tried to approach the essay earlier than doing most things last minute. However it was still better than my procrastinating on the last project. I’m going to try to sent aside specific blocks of time that I will focus on writing on my paper for the next project as to keep me on track and not lose myself to. procrastination. Although I did meet all of the deadlines and turned in my work on time so I am not worrying about that. I think next time I want to try and make an outline of my work and ensure that I keep on track with how I approach the essay to ensure that I don’t go off on unnecessary tangents that don’t aid my paper. When I go on tangents I usually lose where I wanted to actually go in the essay, and to combat this I may list out some bullet point on ideas and points I want to consider when writing and include in my essay.
My process for writing my essay was more spread out and detailed than my last project. I focused on getting my quotes or ideas and brainstormed them. After brainstorming, I was able to make my sentences sound more fluid. It also helped looking back to the prompt and outline often to see what I was missing or even needed to improve. I took more time with each paragraph and made sure it was detailed and included what I was missing from my last project. I felt like I took more advantage of my peer review and my revisions went very smoothly. Hearing my classmates thoughts on what I could do to make my essay stronger was very helpful for revising. I also used tips from the last peer review before starting my essay. I still need to work on procrastinating and when I set a time to work on my essay, to actually do it efficiently. I put a lot more time and effort into this project. I spend more days revising compared to last time where I only used one day. I felt like I put more thought into even simple things like my sentence structure. My essay was successful because I was able to compare a lot of my paragraphs back to my thesis sentence. Going forward I need to stop procrastinating and focus on being in the moment with less distraction. I also feel like I could do deeper reading and instead of just pulling points from the quotes I am using but referring to the whole text throughout. I think that I need to work on reading the directions more thoroughly instead of writing and then looking back and having to fix a lot. I also feel like I could use more advantage of the class time given to us to write instead of being distracted.
A success that I would like to spotlight from this project is that I felt like I did a much better job going in-depth on all of the quotes that I picked. Unlike in the last paper (Project 1) where I basically just summarized what the quotes were saying rather than going in-depth and pulling a deeper meaning from them. This time I feel like I did a good job reaching in and pulling out and analyzing the deeper meaning behind each quote. Soothing that I would change or adjust going forward is listening to peer review more. I did take it into consideration quite a bit however, there was a lot that I just shrugged off and honestly, I’m not too sure how much of that is ok and how much is not. I know the paper the best because I wrote it so at what point do I stop making every change that is suggested, because I wrote the paper I probably know what’s best for it but how do I know which suggested changes will be best for it?
When creating my essay, I found myself often alone in my room simply talking to myself. Allowing my writings to enter a conversation with whomever I may be writing in conjunction with or against allows me to understand my ideas more fully and makes them more robust. I’ve been able to do this for all my essays so far here at UNE, but I believe this last essay was different. I cannot recall a time when I had to so deeply consider my ideas and quotes for my essay, to carefully construct the flow of my paragraphs and sentences, and allowed myself time to connect on the essay, with my ideas. I was intently focused on the construction of the Barclay paragraph, something that is new to me but something that I will continue to use for a long time in all my essays. I believe I was able to use the Barclay paragraph to great success, and that being able to use it in such a way highlights my evolution from a simple high school student into an intellectual College student. Compared to my last essay, this one is more advanced, more built upon than the last, though my previous essay helped to structure parts of this new essay. In the context and theme of the course I’m taking, this essay illustrates my stance on the subject matter the most. Writing is a technology, so I understand the effects modern technology is having on it, and I believe this essay shows those opinions I hold. Lastly, through the readings I’ve done for this essay, primarily from Carr, I’ve found myself wishing to use the practice of “deep reading” that Carr has brough up, and I believe that this essay has changed the way I want to interact with readings.
To begin my process of drafting Project #2, I reread the texts we have dove into over the course of the semester and picked the two that were compelling to me and where I could see primordial stages of them speaking to one another in some way. Once I had my texts picked, I brainstormed some of my own examples of how I align myself with the internet and how I use it in my everyday life. This essay was quite unique in comparison to other writing projects I’ve done in the past as I don’t think I’ve ever been asked to have an isolated conversation with only two other pieces of text. However, this constraint made me think more critically and analyze each text deeply and thoroughly in order to discover the areas where the two authors were communicating with one another. Developing this skill throughout this project has made me feel like a better writing. During this project, I thought I did a good job finding strong quotes that had a lot of meaning and enhanced my argument. I devoted a lot of time to rereading my chosen texts and marking areas where the authors agreed, disagreed, or complicated the other’s argument. I also focused on understanding and applying Barclays formula and I feel there were areas of my paper where I did this effectively with Turkle and Carr. When it comes to areas of improvement, going forward, I would like to devote more time to the final revision process. I feel as though I don’t struggle to hit the main points of the rubric and create a strong foundational essay, yet sometimes I feel as though my writing lacks some of the tiny details. I think if I devoted more time to final read throughs where I can pick my essay apart and get nitpicky, I could enhance my writing to a new level.
My process for this essay was a lot slower than my process for project one. I found that I was second-guessing my thoughts a lot on this project, and this made it hard for me to get into a flow of writing to hit the word counts for the drafts. I felt I had to put a lot more thought into what I was writing, whereas on the last project the ideas were coming to me very quickly. While this was a setback during the drafting process, it later proved to be something very beneficial during the revising, as I didn’t have to make any large mechanical changes to my paragraphs, during the revision process, I spend a lot of time placing the two authors I used into conversation, as that was the criticism I received the most in peer review. I wasn’t engaging deeply enough with the texts that I chose, and it led to my paragraphs not being fully formed. The most helpful thing I did to improve upon this is draw out diagrams of what the authors I chose were saying. I then connected them and showed where they clashed. Eventually, I added myself into the diagram, and how my thoughts and perspective worked with the ideas that I was using from my sources. Putting these ideas into a visual form helped me to go back and revise my paragraphs and add the connections I made into words. I found that I struggled with the Barclay’s paragraph method, specifically the last step of tying both of my quotes and my own thoughts together. I found my own experiences were getting lost, and another large part of my revision process was making sure I corrected this mistake. Another area of improvement that I will make in the future is not feeling the need to over-explain my thoughts, as it leads to very wordy and complicated sentences that diminished the quality of my writing.
After taking proper time to reflect on Project 2, I can say with full confidence that my process was a whirlwind. Frankly for the first few renditions of the projects such as the 400- or 500-word blocks, I was just trying to maximize word count. I really did not place much emphasis on what I was putting down on the paper if I had enough words to shut down my computer and call it a night. It wasn’t until I had completed my ~1200-word count draft and had it reviewed by my peers that I realized what I had been doing was poor. My ideas were all over the page and had no apparent connection even within the paragraphs. The peer review exercise opened my eyes to the crappy job that I had done on those first drafts. After I had gotten my criticism, however, I was kicked into high gear and really buckled down on my paper, revising entire paragraphs to better my overall paper. With this being said, I think my overall effort compared to Project 1 was better. Similarly to project 2 the first drafts were just trying to get words down on the paper. I did not see however the drive in my final draft that I had seen in project 2. I think I was really focused on my revision, using the suggestions from my first essay in project 1 and the suggestions from my peers to formulate an essay that flows from top to bottom. I do feel as though procrastination and distraction are something that I need to work on for the next project. When completing this essay, I would oftentimes sit in front of the televiosn with my computer on my lap and my phone in my hand bouncing between the three when I felt like it. This provided a serious distraction and procrastination that if had been eliminated would have allowed me to spend more time dedicated to my essay.
After a few short revisions, I went back to the video and audio that Professor Miller sent out about paper one. There were a few things he had mentioned about my first paper I missed in the original writing of drafts for this paper that I spent some time reworking and adding to make sure they were there for this one. Hopefully I adjusted the ones he pointed out in the correct fashion. Outside of the revisions he sent, there were a few things I still would’ve wanted to work on. First, was my thesis. I’ve written so many of these and each time they are different, it is hard to start a new one without making them the same style as the last. I don’t think one was too bad, maybe a little vague for the purpose of using only 2 articles to write about, but I digress. The body paragraphs seemed strong in their own ways but looking back on a few parts, I either rambled a bit too much here or I cut it off a bit too abruptly on others. In my eyes the pace seemed ok, but I did change a couple parts around. One paragraph was talking about one topic and similar info reappeared later on, so I made some minor adjustments and brought those two together to make one larger paragraph. Natalie and Mae also helped when it came to where I needed to focus on revisions. They both had said that some of the quotes I brought in were strong and helped with making my argument distinctly mine and had some good ideas of what could be added or removed. Going into the final paper(s) of the class, I think I will take some more time on the parts that will be for connecting information in between main points. Sometimes I find myself adding info that is a good filler, but not always exactly what I’m trying to get from my thoughts and onto the paper.