Overview

Dear Readers, 

All quarter I have learned the importance to revising, and how to better apply it. In my rhetorical analysis and narrative inquiry essays I was able to apply even more revising then I am usually allowed. I really like being able to see comments on my writing to improve certain aspects, so revising the essays this last time was not too bad. I did still find myself stuck at the same parts I was several weeks ago, but I had more time to think through them. 

I struggled most in revising the narrative inquiry because I felt I had written everything I could about the topic. I also for some reason was unable to find my graded copy and did not have any comments to go off of. In the way of revisions I mainly added more background information on how my job worked to connect to the situation. For example I added, “The top student position on the pyramid was Supervisor, who oversaw daily operations. At the very top we had career staff, these people oversaw the department on a long term basis”. I felt this addition clarified my story telling by giving the readers actually knowledge on the people who were involved. I also broke some of my paragraphs up into smaller ones because I felt it sounded like I was rambling on. My narrative also included a lot of dialouge, so I had to find places where dialouge died out to add a new paragraph. Compared to my rhetorical analysis essay, this one was less work and frustration. 

Now on to my rhetorical analysis essay, this was my least favorite writing this quarter. I am really bad at rhetoric and I always have been. I’m not sure if I’m not getting the concept or if I do not know how to write it onto paper. Even after revising several times, I still do not like how it turned out. The first thing I did to revise was to figure out a new order for some of the points. Next, I reorganized these points into more paragraphs instead of three long paragraphs. What needed the most help in this essay was my conclusion, and the second I got to it I completely blanked on how to fix it. I knew I needed to add more, but I did not know what else I could add to this essay without repeating myself. So I once again reconfigured my paragraphs, and found a couple sentences that could fit better at the end so copied and pasted them directly at the end. I read through a couple times and it still did not sound write so I then moved these sentences to the beginning of the conclusion and added a few more sentences. These sentences included, “Another big factor in my decision to try Blender’s for the first time was the hype around their products”. I really wanted to incorporate my connection to Blender’s and why I choose to write about the giant cup on Pardall Rd. I was able to do so by connecting what I had heard about Blender’s to the actual quality of their products to their marketing initiative. I am still on the rocks about this essay because I hate rhetorical and I was not a fan of my writing in this essay. The final thing I edited was the title, I changed it from “A Smoothie a Day Keeps the Doctor Away” to “A Smoothie a Day Might Keep the Doctor Away”. 

In all I really liked being able to go back over my writing not just for the collage, but for actual revisions to my paper. I think revising the papers I completed this quarter, was a strong way to end the quarter. After a quarter in this writing class I believe my writing has improved and so has my writing process. I went from doing no proofreading/ revision to spending hours on revising to get the best writing I could on paper. I would happily take writing a narrative inquiry over a rhetorical analysis any day. 

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