Outcome 1

When it came to revising earlier in the year, I think that I revised less wording and more the overall paragraphs that I had first made. When it came to later in the year, I found myself making sure that my sentences made sense because while they made sense to me, they were unclear to others and I had to make sure that the other readers could really understand what I was trying to get at. Before I would scrap the almost entire paragraph because if I thought that something was wrong or if one part did not make sense, I started over with a completely new slate so that instead of going back sentence by sentence and fixing one and then the next, I could make sure that the entire paragraph made sense. I sort of scrapped this style over the year because while to me I thought that the whole new paragraph made sense because I did what the revisions said, however since it was a completely new paragraph, I think that I developed a habit of just getting my ideas down on the paper for the new paragraph so that I would be done and I made myself believe that it was better that way. And because of that the paragraphs themselves stopped making sense so I stopped making new paragraphs and decided to try the sentence by sentence editing again. I think that overall this was better because I could then take that already edited but not completely new paragraph and go back through to look at the smaller things after instead of convincing myself that it was fine the way it was just because I did what the revision suggested to do.

Outcome 2

In this last project, I tried to use sources that really all were more emotionally heavy than other quotes I could have used. All the quotes made sense with the others because they all really relate to the theme of death and the thoughts and emotions that people feel afterwards. For one of them, when talking about the death of a lab workers cats that were used in the experiment I said, “When the time came to put them down, people around Neibor described him as “A naturally cheerful and warm hearted person, he became tense, withdrawn, shaky (Herzog 5).” In Neibor’s case, he chose the emotionally heavy option because his morals put his research over his own health. In his case, there was not a limit to what someone could ask of him in this case, however that limit could be emotions that cause pain to yourself rather than refusing to do something because you don’t believe it is right.” Originally I had another quote that did not really work well with the other two because it did not make sense with my thesis and it was not relating to this theme around death as much. The large contrast in Neibor’s personality as a result of death made it a good quote to go with my thesis and was easy to connect. Because it was such a timed up thing with the cats being put down, the death really made it difficult for him to act normal and get through his job.

Outcome 3

When given an article to read from class, the first time I read it over, I mark up anything that I feel is interesting and the first read is more just to understand content without digging deeper into what is really happening. That way I can see the large picture without seeing any of the little things for the first read. Normally I would go through the article again and look more for the little details like if the author seems particularly bias in anyway or if there is this theme throughout the article that would hint at any type of feeling because normally an author has some sort of message for you. I don’t tend to annotate at all when I go through again because I can’t focus on reading the smaller ideas if I take the time to pause and mark up a page so I never really annotate the second time through. Any mark ups made after that are ideas from when I am writing about that article or if something comes up in class. When I make my marks, they are more about the bigger things in the article so they are not as important to what I need to know but more just things I want to stick in my mind every time I go through the article so my marks don’t really mean much when it comes to interrogating an article. As for when it comes to discussion, I am unsure when to jump into a conversation and then second guess myself so I never end up saying anything because I convince myself that everything that I want to say has already been said so nothing ever comes out. I guess in that way, I can’t say that I interrogate articles too well but more for a way for myself to understand the larger picture of the article and just end up leaving it there.

Outcome 4

In this first draft, a lot of my comments were more about the overall idea of making sure the essay sounded right in the wording and if at any point, I really had to stop and think about what was happening in the essay. Later on as we went along in the peer review process and as I changed how I peer reviewed, my later comments ended up being about whether they explained the quotes well enough or if they could add more quotes. My comments shifted from sentence structure to more how they can strengthen their own argument with their quote choices and how they explain them. Earlier on I made a comment on Elina’s essay where she included a point where she included her own opinion and it did not seem right where it was so I made a comment. That was one of the few things I think I looked at when I was peer reviewing at this point. In the last peer review session we had, I made comments about where a sentence did not seem right but also like in Molly’s case in her last essay, I told her where to add quotes and if the quotes seemed explained enough.