Week 11

I did not learn much about my paper from my peer reviews.  A few grammatical errors were corrected and I was complimented on clear thesis and good paper.  Talking to Jessica about my paper, however, was more productive.  I summarized each paragraph and read these summaries to her.  She gave me good advice to eliminate a paragraph which I saw did not relate to my thesis once she suggested removing it.  I had forgotten to include captions for my visuals, so I formulated them with Jessica's guidance.  Having never written captions for a research paper before, it was helpful to have the guidance of a more experienced writer.  I was concerned that he synopsis in my conclusion was too short and left the reader feeling unsatisfied, so I added another sentences, and Jessica felt that my paper was well concluded.  

While self-editing my paper, I noticed a few mistakes in my paper.  I had not capitalized some proper nouns and had to fix some tenses.  I worked very hard on my first draft, so editing for the final draft has been fairly simple.  Other than the three major problems I talked to Jessica about - organization, captions, and the conclusion - my editing has been minor.  I am very happy with my paper, and feel that I wrote a very persuasive argument with a lot of good sources.  I started early on my paper in order to finish it early, but instead I wrote nearly 4500 words and did not finish early!  Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately considering all the extra work I did, I picked a topic that fascinated me and so I had more than enough to say about it.  In fact, I had to leave out many topics that were in my original outline.  It was probably the most enjoyable paper-writing experience I have ever had, considering how much I was interested in the subject.