Planning for Revisions

I chose to revise my argument analysis paper since it was my worst paper. I did not fully understand how to write an argument analysis, so I definitely wanted to retry and get it right.

To effectively rewrite the paper, I chose to only use the old paper as an outline of ideas for me to write on for my new paper. I chose to start fresh with my new argument analysis instead of correcting my grammar and structure from the failed paper. This turned out to be a much better paper, with better transitions and greater overview of the argument. 

Final Reflection

For my first blog post, I talked about how this class was a requirement for me to take, but I also stated that with it being a requirement I also wanted to become a better writer. I wanted to become a better writer because in most of my classes it was a requirement to write a lot of papers and essays, and I believe that this class has thought me to become a better writer.

I know that I still have a lot of weaknesses with my writing; one is that I tend to over write certain parts of the paper, or sometimes I don’t write enough.

But I have improved in my transitions from one idea to another and how my paper flows when read. 

My Favorite Paper

The paper I enjoyed writing the most, which in turn is my favorite, is my literacy narrative paper. Writing the paper really brought me back to my childhood and memories of absolutely hating anything that relates to writing or reading. This was my favorite because I was able to write it in 1^st person perspective and I enjoy writing that way since it seems a lot more natural to me. This was also the easiest for me to write since I didn’t have to do any research on a topic or have to follow too many guidelines; it was just a paper where I could write my thoughts and experiences on paper without being too restricted in the manner in which I wrote it in.

I am mainly thinking about using this paper for my portfolio because it is one of the only papers I enjoyed writing this year. It wasn’t too restricted as stated above, and it was enjoyable because I got to think back to those old memories where I was too stubborn to do anything that related with school and writing. 

Analyzing

When I analyzed my peer’s essay, I got a lot of great ideas to put into my own paper. I started to put more specific information towards my essay and not be so choppy with my sentence transitions. His essay flowed freely without having to have that awkward transition between sentences, I then used this information that I had read and applied it to my own essay. I believe that this greatly strengthened my paper and I was very glad that I got to analyze his essay.

Another thing I learned from analyzing another peer’s paper is that having filler words don’t really look that great. It makes the paper seem redundant and repetitive and overall doesn’t make for a good college level paper.

The last thing I learned is how to identify my topic. I knew what my topic was, but it didn’t really stand out to a reader that didn’t know what I was doing with the paper and exactly what I wanted to portray in the paper. 

Peer Review

As a peer reviewer I feel like I don’t qualify enough to judge someone’s paper, I’m not the best writer in the world nor do I even think of myself as a good one either. This is why I have a hard time to peer reviewing someone’s paper; I still try my best to help them out though. Most of the time I just fix certain words in the essay that doesn’t flow well with the rest of the sentences, I fix spelling errors, and punctuation errors.

As the person who get peer reviewed, I like the criticism I get and the corrections I get from my peers. In the beginning I felt that the person who was peer reviewing my paper had no grounds to say anything bad about my paper, that he did not have the authority to say anything bad about another person’s paper, but I eventually opened up to the idea of active criticism and I now enjoy it and actually love the idea of it. 

Writing Errors

One of my prominent writing errors is my transition from one topic to another. They are extremely abrupt and don’t build up to the transition. This makes my essays seem very unorganized and abrupt. Another error I make is using word fillers; I use a lot of words that could be summed up in one or two words. I do this because I try to fulfill the page requirements for my essays. 

Argument Analysis

When I first saw the list of articles I was to choose from for my argument analysis paper I thought, “man this is probably going be a list of boring ass articles that i’m gonna have to sit through and read three times in a row just to understand what the heck they are talking about.”  But one title caught my attention right away, The $78 Million Dollar Bag by Mick Dumke and Ben Joravsky, so much that I didn’t even bother reading the other articles, I clicked the link and closed the list off my computer.

Even though I didn’t know what the article was going to talk about, the title really caught my attention. At first I thought it probably had something to do with how banks are run or what kind of investments people get into to make money, but it was the farthest away from those two, it’s about Marijuana.  The article talks about how much government spending goes into enforcing anti-drug laws and if it’s even worth enforcing with the amount of money we are dumping to the cause. It states that Chicago alone has made 23,000 annual arrests just for marijuana possession and that opening a case would cost $2,500 to the tax payers. These numbers where incredibly shocking numbers to me as I never knew the amount of people that get caught with drug possession let alone how much it costs just to open a case against them. The article even states the amount of money that policemen make just for being witnesses at a case and that even though there is an amount of people that pay the posting bond, a greater amount doesn’t and that is costing tax payers even more money. These are very shocking information to people that are not involved with these acts or don’t have any knowledge of our justice system and the costs it has to us tax payers. These costs are getting so out of hand that officials themselves are advising McCarthy to stop arresting people for small possession of drugs as it is wasting time and money for the city.

Less enforcement for greater savings? I guess so.