Julia’s Site

For this essay we were asked to research everything the University of New England has to offer for us and what our plan may be. Citing the sources we found we were to draft an essay that explains not only how our enhanced plan of study may be important for us, but also why others should value it as well. In my essay I described the experiences I am ready to take on here at UNE. My plan of study involves possibly traveling abroad and learning new dental techniques, and adding a minor in business.

When writing an essay, I tend to just type what is on my mind and go with the flow. The problem with just going with the flow is that you may go onto a big ramble and make mistakes in your writing, or you may read back and it does not make sense the way you put it. For essay 3, when I was drafting this I would constantly read over what I put down on the page. I wanted to make sure that what I was trying to say made sense and I was not misspelling anything. When describing the experiences you can take on in Tangier I had to load up my sentences with information on what it has to offer, and I needed it to be put in the right way to sound intriguing. These local revisions are critical for drafting an essay. Along with the local revision, I had to show my ability to cite sources using the MLA guidelines. Essay 3 we were to have a minimum of three sources to include into our work. When referencing the source in our paper we had to make sure we had correct in text citations and that we were not plagiarising. When citing these sources I had no struggle as I have been practicing MLA format for a few years now. There may be one mistake here or there in my citations, but I am aware of what the correct MLA format is and what I need to do. 

Providing feedback to a classmate on a peer essay draft is important. It will only help the peer advance their writing in furthering their claims and ideas. By getting second hand feedback it allows the peer to fix up their work and make sure their voice is heard and represent the best it can be. When I am giving peer review help, I take in all the comments and listen to see what others have to say about my work and how I can improve. For essay 3, when I was writing my paragraphs I sort of jumped all over the place. I realized that it could have better flow but I was unsure how to put it. Having someone peer review my essay they helped me figure out a better structure and made it more organized. The peer reviewer also added commentary on how I could maybe add in information on a given subject. My job for when I am being a peer reviewer is that I need to carefully analyze the persons essay that I am reading and figure out what they could possibly do better on. I can make comments on their paragraph structures, grammatical errors or changes, and point out if there is any information they can include.   

As Susan Gilroy talked about how annotating puts you actively in a conversation with myself, I can relate to that. When I am reading an article, I think to myself what the message of the article is and make a note of the dialogue. As I come across important sentences, I mark what strikes me and comes to my attention as something big. When annotating a sample essay from Yoko Koga titled “What’s Wrong with Black English?” , I commented on a lot of sentences that had information about a different country and its language. I had in the back of my head what the overall message of the essay was while reading through it and revising. This helped me think about where some of her ideas may have been generated from. 

As always, first drafts are always the hardest. First drafts put you to the test to get down words on a piece of paper to represent your process of thinking upon a question or statement. After you have your first draft finished, then you have to go back and revise your writing to analyze if that is the best way you can put out your train of thought. The revision process allows you to organize the paper better and edit the content. In my chosen significant writing project, I had to make changes to demonstrate my ability to engage in both global and local revision. The first draft to my essay had the big picture I was creating, but I had to revise it so that it can relate to ideas and have more of a purpose and organization. I had paragraphs on studying abroad then I jumped into the next paragraph on adding a minor and how it’s beneficial, and after that paragraph the next had content on studying abroad again. As you can see I had the big picture of my essay and how it relates to certain ideas down but the organization was out of place. This process was me engaging in global revision. The next revision process is called local revision, and I had only had a few things to touch up on for that task. Local revision is fixing up sentences to make them flow better and correcting any grammatical errors. When I write my papers I always read back on what I have written every few sentences to make sure I am not making grammar mistakes, and to confirm that the sentences make sense one after another. The difference between my first and final drafts is that my final draft always contains more content and is more detailed. In my first draft I had a paragraph about UNE’s campus in Tangier. All I mentioned in my first draft on this topic was what it had to offer there. In my final draft I added information on how beneficial it can be for certain majors and all the different techniques in the field of study you can learn. It took time to organize my essay the best I could put out, but I couldn’t have gotten through it without the process of revision. 

As I wrote my final draft of my chosen significant writing project, I incorporated sources as evidence to help back up my claims of how studying a broad and adding a minor is beneficial. By bringing up that I am taking on a minor in business at my time here, I needed to have good evidence to support why it is going to help me in my career. I researched information on how having a minor in business will support my career in the dental hygiene field, and found a good source to include to my essay. This source stated what a minor truly is and what is has to offer. After reading through sources, I began to paraphrase and get the general gist of the information on the page. Having that knowledge now in my head I put it into my own words and incorporated the source. For my field of study, having a minor in business will allow me to not only understand how a business may work, but I will also be able to potentially open up my own business. Having that information in my essay demonstrates how I am able to integrate the sources around me that are available. I used this source as evidence to back up my claim that adding a minor in something can only help you, it cannot hurt you in your career.