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Alexis Sanchez

Professor Batty

English 102

11 December 2017

Reflection

Despite the good score I got on this essay, I decided to revise quite a large amount of it. I

started off with the organization and realized that my thesis was not aligned with the order of the

body paragraphs. I decided to simply change the structure of the thesis rather than rearrange the

body paragraphs, since I felt the order was fine. In my first body paragraph I dedicated a huge

portion of to discussing Plaths electric shock therapy. However, I felt like the second quote I

used in that paragraph explained the same concept that the ECT quote was trying to; that Plaths

poem is about her battle with depression. For that reason, I decided to take it out entirely and

make more room for analysis at the end. I found this to be a good decision because I was able to

tie this paragraph back to my thesis in a much smoother way. The second big change I made was

dividing the second body into two portions. At the writing center I was told that discussing my

counter argument within my second body felt a bit disorganized. So, I highlighted all the

sentences that had to do with the counterargument, cut them out, and organized them into one

separate paragraph. For my third body paragraph, I made sure to first of all indent it. Secondly, I

made sure to establish that the repetition speeds up the pace of the poem before I delve into the

greater analysis, instead of mentioning it in the middle. There were a large amount of run-ons in

this paragraph as well, which I fixed during the editing portion of my revision. Overall, I feel that
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by improving the clarity and organization of my essay I was able to make more room for analysis

and better support my quotes. For editing, I mostly fixed all the typos that I found and used better

transition words that make the essay flow easier. I fixed all my comma splices. Also, I made sure

the tense was appropriate since the poem discussed a past incident. Lastly, I properly cited the

quotes thanks to Professor Battys advice on how to quote many lines of a poem using slashes.

Additionally, I made sure I cited based off only the stanzas of the poem, rather than fluctuating

between the stanzas and lines. Overall, revising this essay enlightened me on how less can be

more when it comes to clarity. It also taught me to be more comfortable cutting out large chunks

of my essay because in the end it can make the poem flow a lot easier.

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