1. My final thesis statement was, “I think humans naturally practice a sort of selfish behavior without even realizing it and changes can be made to that behavior if you really set your mind to it. Self-awareness, mindfulness, and critical thinking is important for your own mind’s sake.” I didn’t really sit down and think about exactly was my thesis statement would be. When I started writing my first draft, I just wrote out my introductory thoughts and kind of just pulled a thesis together from what I had already written.
  2. My strength in this essay was my personal story. I think this is where my essay shines, it was really strong and powerful, and it felt real. I didn’t do much revision to my personal story part of my essay, because it didn’t need much work. The way I had written originally was strong enough. It was so strong that I was afraid if I revised it, I would ruin it. I did local revisions to my personal story, just spelling and grammar revisions.
  3. I think most of the Global revisions I had made were the flow of my paragraphs. I had to rearrange some of them so that the themes would make more sense as a whole. Another area of global revisions I had to focus on was heightening and strengthening the rest of my paper to try and be as strong as my personal story. I used reading it aloud as my tool and the peer reviews and the edits my professor had made on my first draft. Also the one on one meeting with my professor helped me focus on exactly what I needed to revise.
  4. One of my biggest challenges was where to begin. When I first sat down to write the rough draft, I didn’t know where to start or how exactly I wanted to have my essay set up. I didn’t know whether to put summaries first and then explanations and then my personal story or mix it up everywhere. Once I got started, I was on a roll. Another one of my biggest challenges was all the parts of my essay except for the personal story (especially the introduction paragraph.) The problem was that my personal part was so strong that it made the other parts of my essay seem a little weak, my introduction paragraph was the weakest and needed a lot of work. I also completely forgot my Barclay paragraph in my first draft. So, when I included in my final draft, I didn’t have any peer or professor reviews on it. I was scared that my Barclay paragraph seemed to be repetitive of the things I had already stated in my essay.
  5. This essay is different from the last because this time I wasn’t as afraid to dig into my own voice. This essay was supposed to specifically include a personal narrative sort of, which is the strongest part of my essay. I think the order of my paragraphs in this essay is a little messier than the 1st, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the 1st essay was better.
  6. I would say I need more class time work on introduction paragraphs, thesis statements, and maybe a little work on my conclusion. My conclusion wasn’t bad, it was actually pretty good. But after having to revise my introduction paragraph, I was afraid my conclusion and intro paragraphs wouldn’t connect or make sense. So because my introduction was so weak I felt like that may cause my conclusion paragraph to be weak, even if it wasn’t (that’s just how I felt.)