- Describe your essay’s most notable strength, using at least one direct quote from your work to support your choice.
I believe that my most notable strength in this essay was being able to insert myself and write in the first person for large amounts of it. I started off this essay with a personal anecdote where I explained that for “as long as I could remember, I have been blessed and burdened with being an empath. Constantly feeling the emotions of those around me, no matter how negative, and having this overwhelming desperation to help them in any way I can”. I am typically not very good at inserting myself into academic writing, as I was specifically told not to throughout most of my life, but I found that by practicing it with this essay that it allowed me to feel more comfortable doing so.
2. Describe the differences in your revision process from Essay #1 to Essay #2. How has your revision process improved? Call attention to one place in your 2nd essay where revision helped significantly.
My revision process for essay #1 was essentially fixing things like grammar and word choice, whereas my revision process for essay #2 was changing large parts of my essay in order to make them stronger. During my first essay, I didn’t receive much peer feedback, so I didn’t really change all that much, but I received quite a few bits of feedback on my second essay, which allowed me to revise in a more purposeful way. In particular, my conclusion was not finished when it came time to peer review. It was choppy and felt as though it was missing something significant, but after peer review I was able to add more things to it as well as make it flow more seamlessly.
3. Briefly analyze your integration of source material. What techniques did you use to synthesize source materials within your 2nd essay?
Almost every one of my paragraphs was set up as a Barclay paragraph. I found that I was comfortable with that format, and it allowed me to continue to insert the source material in a way that didn’t interfere with the flow of my writing.
4. Copy and paste your final draft’s strongest claim sentence into your post, then analyze it briefly. What makes it your strongest claim? How has your voice been integrated as part of your academic writing so far this semester?
“While I can see a small correlation between empathy and its tight borders being considered close-minded, I think that Bloom’s argument is nothing but ignorant”
I believe that this was the strongest claim that I made in my essay. I think this is largely due to the word choice that I made, as I typically don’t write with enough passion to use the word “ignorant” in an academic piece of writing. I think that I have become better at inserting myself in my academic writing, as I haven’t been able to do so in past classes, but now I am doing so with passion behind what I am writing about. By being able to actually insert myself in my arguments, I am able to have more of a connection with the statements being said, rather than trying to piece together something that feels forced.
5. Paste then analyze your thesis statements from the first and second essay. How do they compare? Note similarities/differences. Which is stronger and why?
Essay #1: Although social media has a reputation for lessening the meaning of in person relationships, it creates connections that are so important they will change one’s life
Essay #2: Although empathy can only be extended so far before overextending oneself, it is ultimately the driving force behind meaningful relationships and an essential tool for understanding the people around you.
My two thesis statements are set up in a very similar format in the sense that they start with a counter and then my argument. The difference between the first and second thesis’, however, is that I added a second argument on my second paper. I feel like the second thesis is stronger, as it provides more of a foundation as to what the paper is going to be about, but I believe that the first thesis is easier to digest and much less wordy than the second.
