The majority of this year was spent on improving our writing for the first three targets, though the fourth is still relevant and important in crafting polished essay. As the year progressed, I began to see myself more easily spotting errors of syntax, spelling, and other cosmetic details. To demonstrate my ability to revise based on the feedback of others and my own opinions, I chose to revisit my Insider/Outsider Biography, paper 1.1. Coming back to this piece after several months, I immediately saw a lot of room for improvement. Spelling and grammar issues aside, my essay lacked substance and specificity, especially in my central claim, which was not narrow or well-defined enough to form a strong argument. This is an issue I encounter often
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I referenced margins and centers featured in virtual “worlds in which cutthroat groups of privileged kids rule high school, stepping over tons of ‘nerdy’ kids in the process”. While this statement adds some detail, it isn’t enough to conjure up a specific image for most readers. In your feedback, you suggested that I start with a specific film image, which I felt would really help keep the reader’s attention by referencing something relevant to them. I decided to explore a specific movie – “Mean Girls” – and reworked my introduction’s organization, starting the essay off on a more exciting and topical note. Once I got into the later paragraphs, my writing improved and I could tell my ideas were flowing much more easily. The second paragraph, though, was just as bare as the first. In fact, it was only four sentences long. I started by presenting background information on what I thought being an insider or outsider meant, and started to add in the high school aspect. Unfortunately, I didn’t dig deep enough to make this paragraph stand on its …show more content…
These are displayed in my second major paper, where I analyzing and refuted several peer-reviewed academic papers to support my argument. The topic that I choose has been heavily debated by experts so it was initially difficult to develop a clear thesis, but as I started to understand the documents better, I realized that my thesis didn’t need to represent a “correct answer”. I instead decided to focus on the effects of what the scholars could agree on, which turned out to be more than I originally thought. The issue of food deserts has been a hot topic for many urban planners, and has even been discussed by Michelle Obama. I asked over 20 experts in the field for interviews and several responded, which added some clarity and explanation to the dense peer-reviewed papers. This helped create an intertextual conversation, in which I viewed the documents in relation to each other to form my own ideas, rather than viewing them individually. For example, I compared the results of a study by the USDA and research by Dr. Anju Aggarwal, which were essentially opposites. But by looking at the notes from each investigation, I found there to be a “lack of effective and fair evidence collection” on both sides. On the other hand, though, Dr. Martin Caraher, a professor at City University London, said that experts almost universally agreed that the poor were predisposed to obesity for reasons of supply.
I referenced margins and centers featured in virtual “worlds in which cutthroat groups of privileged kids rule high school, stepping over tons of ‘nerdy’ kids in the process”. While this statement adds some detail, it isn’t enough to conjure up a specific image for most readers. In your feedback, you suggested that I start with a specific film image, which I felt would really help keep the reader’s attention by referencing something relevant to them. I decided to explore a specific movie – “Mean Girls” – and reworked my introduction’s organization, starting the essay off on a more exciting and topical note. Once I got into the later paragraphs, my writing improved and I could tell my ideas were flowing much more easily. The second paragraph, though, was just as bare as the first. In fact, it was only four sentences long. I started by presenting background information on what I thought being an insider or outsider meant, and started to add in the high school aspect. Unfortunately, I didn’t dig deep enough to make this paragraph stand on its …show more content…
These are displayed in my second major paper, where I analyzing and refuted several peer-reviewed academic papers to support my argument. The topic that I choose has been heavily debated by experts so it was initially difficult to develop a clear thesis, but as I started to understand the documents better, I realized that my thesis didn’t need to represent a “correct answer”. I instead decided to focus on the effects of what the scholars could agree on, which turned out to be more than I originally thought. The issue of food deserts has been a hot topic for many urban planners, and has even been discussed by Michelle Obama. I asked over 20 experts in the field for interviews and several responded, which added some clarity and explanation to the dense peer-reviewed papers. This helped create an intertextual conversation, in which I viewed the documents in relation to each other to form my own ideas, rather than viewing them individually. For example, I compared the results of a study by the USDA and research by Dr. Anju Aggarwal, which were essentially opposites. But by looking at the notes from each investigation, I found there to be a “lack of effective and fair evidence collection” on both sides. On the other hand, though, Dr. Martin Caraher, a professor at City University London, said that experts almost universally agreed that the poor were predisposed to obesity for reasons of supply.