Catherine Bacon's Courses

I chose to once again highlight and cut up my paper because I really like hands on stuff and I'm a visual learner, so I think this is the best type of revision for me. The highlighting allowed me to see the parts of my paper that needed just a bit more textual evidence and the cutting/tape process let me reorganize my paper to make my argument stronger. The reorganization of my paper also let me reorganize my thoughts and made the paper as a whole easier to read.

I chose to cut up my rough draft and re-organize it to ease the flow of the paper. I realized, while cutting it up, that the paper was completely out of order and didn't really follow a pattern. It seemed as if I just put all my thoughts down on paper in an unorganized fashion. At first, it was organized based on ideal beauty, then eye imagery, then the characters. What I began to realize, though, was that my paper had the characters and eye imagery throughout the entire paper.

After underlining every sentence and cutting up each paragraph my paper looks like a jumbled mess. After doing this revision, I realized I have several contextual issues. The organizational structure is pretty good and I couldn't find a problem there, but the content needs to be filled out a little more. Each paragraph could offer a bit more analysis and transitions. The topic discusses marriage in the 1920s, but the paper doesn't have a main focus about this type of relationship. I guess I need to ask myself whats the point and go from there.

I did the same revision I used for the midterm paper (the highlighting exercise) because it was effective last time around. This exercise helps me cut out unnecessary and repetitive ideas that do add to the cohesiveness of my paragraphs. One of my biggest problems is rambling on about the same thing for a long time so this helps me trim the rambling. Also, I can see how much analysis I have and in comparison to textual evidence. I feel like I did a thorough job of analyzing the text. I also saw that I need to hammer out my transitions a bit more.

I began my final paper revision with the intent to briefly check for spelling and grammar mistakes (a huge weakness of mine) and then move on to the highlighting method. I never made it. I noticed a couple of huge holes in my argument that I wouldn't have been able to read on without fixing. I think the holes are gradually being filled, but I honestly feel like I've run up against a brick wall. This revision process was helpful for me because it gave me another hour and a half or so to look at my paper, and the changes I made were significant and definitely improved my paper.

In this workshop I switched papers with 2 other people and it was extremely helpful. They were able to find places that my paper sounded awkward or didn't make sense as well as correcting some of my basic grammatical errors. I feel like I had read my paper so many times through and in doing so things that make sense in my mind don't always come across clearly to other readers. Yay for revision workshops!!!

I summarized too much in my paper, and I'm working on adding more analysis to balance it out. I can tell I have a lot of work a head of me, but I also have a good feeling about this paper. All the editing I did, I did on the computer so I could just print out the fresh, readable copy. While cleaner, this makes it more difficult to see exactly where I made changes, but it eliminates all the random scribbles and paragraphs I would have had otherwise.

As per usual, my conclusion is lame. I need to refine and tighten my argument more, so as to write a more definitive concluding paragraph.

I found through this exercise that I had enough claims, textual evidence and analysis. What I was lacking was clear topic sentences and ending paragraphs without explaining to the reader where I was going next. I also lacked description of how this related back to my thesis statement and lacked how this related to the paper as a whole. I found that some of my claims were not backed up by textual evidence or any evidence at all. Specifically one whole paragraph had claims and assertions but not textual evidence.

In doing the revision exercises, some of the things I noticed in my paper that I will change presented themselves.

During class I had two different people read and review my paper, and their perspectives really helped me sort out some of the problems I was having with my paper. Also, I tend to ramble and write in a stream of consciousness type way, so it was helpful to see if my jumbled thoughts actually make sense to other people. This exercise also made me realize how much more work I have to do. This week should be chock-full of tragic heroes and Lolly Willows!