In my 800-word draft, I had a Barclays paragraph that was very mechanical, and almost robotic. I was very rigidly following a template, and I was very focused on making sure my input on these issues was coming through. Due to this, my writing was greatly lacking any conversation between Carr and Anderson’s ideas. I also had a very awkward thesis. It did not flow well with the rest of my introduction, and it wasn’t fully formed. As I was writing, a lot of my ideas morphed and became more complex, and the thesis I started with in my draft did not reflect that. Furthermore, my analysis was very unorganized in body paragraph 1 of my draft, and I started deviating from the original topic that I was aiming to comment on. As I moved toward my final project, in the revision process I made sure to add more clear instances of me thoughtfully placing Carr and Anderson into conversation, instead of placing their ideas one after the other with little-to-no overlap between them. I did an exercise on my own to help me visualize where I wanted Carr and Anderson to “argue,” and then was confidently able to go back into my essay and add Carr’s voice back into my analysis. I was also able to stay on topic more and not go off on a tangent because I had the skeleton of my paragraph keeping me grounded. This revision then pushed me to further develop the “I say” in my body paragraphs, and I was able to make better connections between technology in my own life and technology from the perspective of the texts I was using. I did the same process for my second body paragraph, which was much easier to write. In my 800-word draft, I put off developing my second body paragraph because I didn’t know how to take the connections I was making in my head and put them onto the page. However, when developing my final project, after using the method I stated above, I was able to work out all of the complications with expressing the ideas I was trying to make about technology “manipulating” our brains for capital gain, without going on too much of an off-topic tangent (a recurring pattern that I noticed in my writing during the first round of this project and in project 1). Looking back, I could have developed this idea in my second body paragraph a little further, but overall, it evolved greatly from the hesitance and rambling I had in my first drafts to the final product, and I am very proud of the revisions I made. After I had developed my body paragraphs, I was able to go back and edit my thesis to more accurately convey the ideas that I discussed. I also made my thesis more interesting and included ideas that added to the conversation about technology, not just summarizing the ideas from my sources. I also went back and added a smoother transition from introducing my sources to my thesis, which improved the flow of my essay on a local level.
