(Recursive Process) – 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). Word Count: 480

At the beginning of the semester, I honestly didn’t think much of the revision process. In high school, We had to do a rough draft, a peer review, and a final draft. When the time came to start revising, I spent minimal time, if any. I took it as extra time to focus on other work, rather than actually sitting down and spending quality time revising my essay. I’m not just saying this, but my mindset now has completely changed. I’m devoting more time to the process, focusing more on revision specifically. A huge thing that helps is how seriously we take peer review in this class. I’m getting valuable feedback that helps me improve my writing, whereas in high school the reviews we left on our peer’s papers were more-so local revisions, focused more on grammatical mistakes, and those can only go so far to help improve a paper. 

As the semester progressed, I devoted more time to the revision process, more than I ever have in any of my past English classes. I put more effort in because I realized the importance of it, and how I could see the improvements in my paper, from rough drafts to final drafts. If you compare my high school rough drafts to final drafts there wouldn’t be much difference, only minimal changes. Now, you’ll see in my writing drastic changes and improvements. 

An example of this is how I re-constructed this sentence from my rough draft in Essay #2 and then improved it upon the final draft. 

Revised version:

Here I focused on simplicity and restructuring. (local revision) I felt like I had some unnecessary words, like “what others may be going through.” So I revised that sentence into something slightly more to the point, and easier to understand. “Idea of increased social awareness is something that…” 

One big thing Professor Brod mentioned to me that has helped me with all three of my essays, is to make sure you have an introduction to the source/transition (global revision), for example, “As DFW puts it…” Instead of just going right into the quote. In the above example, I said “In DFW’s piece…” But I felt like I could make the introduction into the source stronger, so instead, with Professor Brod’s help, in my revised piece, I had “In DFW’s piece, he says reflecting on strangers around him…” 

Small changes like this I believe reflect on the entire essay, because it shows your being specific, which helps the understanding from a reader’s perspective. This is the whole reason my revision strategies have improved because I understand how important it is to focus on specificity. (local revision)