Learning Outcome 1
Revising my papers has become a very in-depth process for me. It is especially noticeable through out all of my papers, if you look at the changes I made on each one. There is also usually quite a bit that I do before I actually start editing my paper. One of those things, like Sommers mentions, I reword sentences so that they are not repetitive. Sometimes I miss them in the initial writing, but I always catch them in the editing. It stands out to me because of how annoying and repetitive it is. When it actually comes to the rewriting of my paper, if it needs it, I have a really hard time looking at my sentences and the problems they have, and changing them to fix it. It is hard for me to ‘zoom in’ and see what my evidence is all point at to give it a better direction. In my final paper though, I was much more successful in doing this. Connecting thoughts and claims is also very hard for me. My mind moves at a much faster rate than what I can write down so sometimes what I am thinking gets mixed up. Going back and fixing that problem can be difficult because I cannot even follow my own train of thought. But working through these three papers has really helped me to hone some of these skills and to make the whole process a lot better.
Learning Outcome 2
My third paper was actually the most successful when it came to using quotes, so this question is pretty easy to answer. Not only were we allowed to find our own source, along with two other sources provided for us, but I also found another source which connected to my major, that helped to prove my point even further. I think this paper is also an example where I integrated my quotes the best and most influentially. I usually struggle a lot with putting quotes into my papers, and picking the ones that fit best, but I did much better in this paper. Instead of trying to force a quote that I just found into my paragraph, I found the quotes that best supported what my claims where, and built that paragraphs around that. The best example of this was with my quote about the effects that human touch had on our mentality. I knew I wanted to include this subject into my writing because I knew all about it, so it was just about finding the quote. Once I did though, the whole paragraph formed perfectly around it, making probably the best claim in the whole paper (I think). I always struggled with taking quotes and fitting them into my paper, but with enough effort, I think I managed to do the best job with this paper.
Learning Outcome 5 and 6
Formatting my paper’s works cited has always been really simple for me. It is not very difficult to do the format correctly, especially since we have had to do so much of it over the years. Every paper, I have had to progressively add more sources to my works cited page. On the first paper I did happen to miss adding the works cited to my actual paper, but I did have it in a different document. For the majority of my sources, I just used what I had done in my previous papers, and copied and pasted them into my new ones. I have not noticed any typical errors that I have in my sources, so I am not sure if that means if I am doing them right or if there is no corrections on them.
Learning Outcome 4
At the beginning of the year, when I was peer editing other people’s papers, I was afraid to really go at it because I did not want to offend anyone, and I did not want to be super nit-picky. I should have realized that, since I like when people rip apart my papers and tell me everything that is wrong with them, it is very likely that other people like the same thing. I started to realize that more throughout the peer editing process so more towards the end, I was editing the papers more intensely and pointing out the mistakes a lot more. This translated a lot to my own writing because I started to work harder at editing my own paper and making sure that I worked incredibly hard at each revision suggestion.
