Demonstrate the ability to approach writing as a recursive process that requires substantial revision of drafts for content, organization, and clarity (global revision), as well as editing and proofreading (local revision).

Revision hasn’t always been my strong suit. In high school we weren’t taught very many effective ways to revise our work. Going into college, the process became a lot different than how it was in high school. Originally, the revision process was your basic grammatical errors. Now, it has become so much more than that. I learned to shorten sentences that don’t need to be expanded when you are trying to make a clear cut point. As well as new ways to transition into paragraphs and new paragraph-style structures to add when you are looking to fill out more pages. Flow was another big factor in my essays I had to focus on. After saying all I had to say in my essay I would constantly reorganize my paragraphs, ensuring it had a good sense of flow to the reader. That way they don’t doze off and I am able to pull the reader back in. I was taught to give short summaries about a quote and was encouraged to use the word “I”. Being encouraged to use my voice in an essay was a drastic change for me since high school. In high school, my teachers always told me what they wanted to hear. In college, my professor is telling me he wants to hear me, my opinions, my voice. Which was weird because no one cared what I had to say in an essay before. So, it took some getting used to. I would say I am still adapting to using my voice and where it fits good in an essay. Ultimately, this new approach on writing has significantly improved my writing ability in the revision process.

Above is the introduction paragraph of my essay, “Shadows Behind Joy” before and after the revision process. Before, I only had an idea of what I wanted to start with. The paragraph was lacking so much. What am I gonna be writing about? Where is my thesis? What are the sources? When I revised, I deleted what I had wrote, keeping that idea in my head. I decided to open with a strong hook, quoting from the famous novel, “The Outsiders”. I then made a summary of the two main sources I would be using and added my stance on the topic with a short thesis. If my revision process had stayed the same as it was in high school I probably would not know where to began in expanding my introduction paragraph. It would’ve remained unfit.