Dear Roberta,

This assignment was easier than I thought it would be, but not what I would call easy. I
am not one to generally revise my work all that much. I never want to look back on my work and
I find it hard to reread and fix. I actually had a pretty decent time revising these works. With
WP2 especially I had a fair amount to fix and I basically rewrote the entire thing. I ended up not
changing my theses that much which surprised me, but I did focus a lot on my topic sentences
and making sure each of my paragraphs had real concluding sentences
The first thing I changed with WP1 was my thesis. I put some more specifics in my thesis
about the points that I would be making in my essay. I worked on my topic sentences to make
them better state the ideas of my paragraphs and connect with my thesis. In the first body
paragraph I added some evidence to help flush out my ideas. During reader review I got a
comment that one of my points didnt make sense so I added some more evidence and analysis
so as to better explain the point I was trying to make. In the third body paragraph I tried to
explain my point about formatting a little better by explaining exactly what I meant by
formatting.
With WP2 I ended up rewriting most of my essay. I didnt really change my thesis, but I
completely changed how I formatted the entire paper. In my original essay, I made each
convention a paragraph and compared both sources in that one paragraph. Then I analyzed the
conventions all in one big paragraph at the end. This time around I broke up my paragraphs on
the conventions so that each source had its own paragraph for each convention and then moved
the analysis into the same paragraphs where I described the convention, deleting the gigantic
analysis paragraph at the end. I also worked on my topic sentences and concluding sentences in
all my body paragraphs to make sure they stated the ideas of my paragraphs and connected to my
thesis. In my third body paragraph I expanded a lot on the idea of Cooper and Koppels
paraphrasing of scientific studies. I thought about why they would paraphrase instead of quote
and wrote a bit about that. This ended up helping me a lot with the point I was trying to make
because it backed up my thesis really well. It flushed out why biochemistry was a less inclusive
discipline and gave a better explanation that what I had thought of previously. In my fourth body
paragraph I added some more evidence so that I would give examples of a variety of sources Bud
uses. I thought that would better illustrate my point that his use of sources was more wellrounded. I then actually talked to a friend who is a history major about why that discipline uses a
lot of sources. I was under the impression it was just for credibilitys sake, but my friend gave me
some more ideas about how and why historians use various sources. That really helped me to
write not just about Buds work, but about the discipline as a whole. I also adjusted my
concluding sentence in my concluding paragraph to better represent the whole picture of the
essay. Finally, I changed my title to give a more conclusive description of the ideas I was writing
about.

I chose WP1 and WP2 to revise because I felt that they required more work than my
WP3. There were more things that needed fixing. Obviously I focused more on WP2 than WP1. I
know that I probably could have revised WP1 a bit more, but I was really stressed for time and
had a ton of other studying to do for finals and I got really into WP2 (I did it first) and ran out of
time for WP1. Sorry about that. I also shied away from WP3 because I felt that I would have a
really hard time revising my open-genre pieces. I felt really proud of those and didnt really want
to change anything about them.
I think the most important thing Ive taken away from this class this quarter is about the
act of revising. Personally, I dont really feel as though this class affected how I write my first
drafts of things. I pretty much wrote all my essays as I have always written essays. In high school
I was a part of a writing-intensive program so honestly I didnt really feel like I learned that
much about the initial act of writing. However, I got a lot more comfortable letting others read
my work and with revising this quarter. Even though we didnt really focus on revising until the
last couple weeks of class, the reader review forced me to go back and revise my work
throughout the quarter and that was an interesting experience for me. I dont really like going
back and reading my work because it makes me feel bad about myself. Reading Shitty First
Drafts helped with that a lot and then the reader review forced me to be more comfortable with
revising my work. I found the PBs really helpful as well because they made me think through
parts of my essay and write out things before I initially wrote the essay. I usually just free-write
my essays and then dont really go back and revise them so I think this class really helped me
grow as a writer. I think that my final portfolio, especially my revised WP2, really reflect this
because I really made the effort to go back and expand on ideas and revise the essay to make it as
good as it could be.

I had a great time in this class. Thank you for this experience.
Sincerely,
Ember Doherty