- My final thesis was that when overused, social media can take away from real life experiences and face to face connections. However, social media does have some positive aspects that sometimes make it easier to have a conversation via social media rather than in person.
- One thing that I was reminded of while working on my first paper is how much I try and edit my writing while I’m working on my first draft, rather than letting myself write down all of my thoughts before going back. I also remembered how much easier it was to write after creating some sort of organizer to put all of your ideas in. I knew how I was going to format the first three pages of my essay but once I got past that, I realized that I no longer knew where my writing was going and it ended up making the process much longer and more difficult for me.
- During my revision I focused the most on making sure that my writing flowed together smoothly and had strong transition sentences. Some places just needed a little bit more of an explanation in order to make my response thorough, but other places needed more work. I could sense a clear divide in my writing between my first three and last three pages and I wanted to blur that line by adding more specifics about how Megan’s story connects to the big picture of social media, as well as my opinion on the topic of social media . The comments from all three people that revised my essay were very helpful for me in order to visualize what I needed to fix, such as using the “quote sandwich” technique and the TRIAC paragraph.
- Next time I will be sure to make a clear organizer to jot down my ideas, as well as a place to write my thesis before I start my actual essay so that I can always refer back to it. I also want to pick out the quotes that I want to use before I start writing, something that I didn’t really do as much in essay one. Finally, I think that I should read my essay aloud not only after I finish my final draft like I did this time, but also during each revision in order to catch obvious errors or repetition.
