Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Assigned: Done With the Personal Narrative
I am not sure if it is appropriate to shout for joy when finishing a paper, but I did! I felt so relieved when I crossed “Turn in personal narrative” off my calendar. That paper was the first of its kind that I have written in a very long time. As is evident from previous posts, I was unsteady in the beginning and quite nervous to embark on this writing adventure, but the long minutes I spent looking at the word document on my computer paid off. I found the peer reviews to be extremely helpful. Both Philip and Emily gave me good advice that would improve my paper. They also helped me catch the little grammatical errors that I frequently and absentmindedly skip over. I was happy to hear that they enjoyed my paper. Thank goodness! I struggled figuring out how to include a central message subliminally, but not too obscure that my audience wouldn’t be able to figure it out. In my final draft, I think I ended up being a little bit too explicit with my message. Finding the balance in the “message” department, was definitely a challenge. Another obstacle I faced, was creating an effective title. I have found that titles have a huge impact on the reader. When I pick up a book at the bookstore, the title is what influences me to keep the book or put it down. I hope that as I grow as I writer I will be able to work my central message in seamlessly and create a title that will immediately engage my audience.
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If I didn't know any better i would say you copied my blog post and put it as your own! The only two big differences were the peer reviews and the title. My peer reviews were not as helpful as they could have been, but that wasn't my reviewers fault, they did great, it was mine because i gave them a very rough draft that still needed a lot of work, so the fine tuning that a peer review is suppose to provide was obscured by grammatical errors and awkward sentence structures (and run on sentences like this one). Also I have never really thought about how much the title affects a paper, because I like you will base whether or not to read something on its title yet when I title my own papers I put down the first thing that comes to mind. Anyway I am very excited to get to read more of your insights as we go throughout these next few weeks, and have a great day!
ReplyDeleteI agree with you! I was so excited to finish my paper! I never wrote long papers in high school, and that was one of my biggest fears coming into college. I was so confused on how I would even be able to come up enough material to write more then 3 pages. I think that writing the personal narrative was pretty easy because it was just about ourselves. When we have to do a research paper thats when its going to really stink to write long papers. I have never liked peer editing because I always found it super pointless and not helpful. I agree with you this time however I found the peer editing to be the most helpful thing. I think it was because the people in my group actually took the time to read it and give their input. It made the paper a little less stressful to write.
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