Jumbled Popcorn
In writing a paper I often start out full of ideas and methods of analysis about the topic or issue at hand. However, I find it tedious to have to connect those ideas; yet, I want my paper to be cohesive and organized. My rough draft paper often seems as if someone crumpled it up and threw it in a blender. I always know what I want to say and feel that I have a good development of ideas, but often struggle in drawing out my main points. The paper that I am revising is my analysis paper because it lacks an assertive thesis and an organized plan. These are important global revisions that need to be revised in order for my paper to truly be reader friendly.
When I first got my analysis paper back I felt that the grade was justified because I thought that I had developed my ideas and analyzed them well while providing evidence and support for my claims. However, I also recognized immediately upon a quick glance over my paper that my claims were not clearly stated and therefore my readers were not sure what the point of my paper was. I was not sure how to go about fixing this problem until I heard the presentation in class about global revisions. The presenters talked about how important it is to make sure that your introduction and your conclusion are similar in that they discuss the same points because this means your paper stayed focused. Also, in order to keep my paper focused it should have a concise structure laid out and then followed. When it came down to it, my paper was lacking two major things: a thesis that incorporated and strongly stated what the purpose and main points of the paper were and a paragraph detailing the structure of my paper so that the reader could easily follow my ideas.
Knowing what I had to do I then sat down to revise my paper. Thinking I knew exactly what needed to be done I told myself it would take a half hour flat. An hour later I was still staring at the computer screen trying to rationalize to myself the long new bolded areas.
Writing is no easy task: transforming intricate ideas in your mind to coherent, limpid sentences is no simple feat. And even when you think you are finished with a piece of writing, you can always improve it. Which is why my analysis of The Wife Speaks by Elizabeth Stoddard, which I earned a 7 on, requires revisions on numerous aspects: my lengthy, garrulous thesis, and--most importantly--the analysis of the poem itself, which is cursory and superficial. Right off the bat, I noticed that my thesis, which comprises five-lines by itself, obscures my argument due to its incoherence.
In all my years of going to school I have had trouble writing introductions and conclusions for my papers. All of my teachers would tell me that you would want your introduction to flow and clearly start what you are going to talk about. When ever I would write an introduction it would never flow. It is always fairly choppy and I could not figure out how to smoothen it out. Now that I am in college people have told me to not summarize my paper in my introduction. This requires even more creativity and thought to create an introduction, which I can never seem to think of. This also applies to my conclusions as well on how they must be so complicated. When writing an introduction and or conclusion there are suppose to be all different techniques to help write them but I can never apply any of them to what I am writing so they rarely help me. Also depending on the class I am writing for determines how difficult it is for me to write an introduction and conclusion. For example, English papers and philosophy papers usually give me a bit more trouble then history papers. I have learned from being in college that English and philosophy papers need to be much more elaborate and deep. When writing a history paper you must be direct and right to the point and that is what I seem to do best. It shows because my history paper grades are a bit higher then my philosophy and English papers.
Courage means different things to different people. It may mean strength, having fear but still going for it or even bravery. Courage is a trait that all humans possess but rarely use. Courage is inside of all humans but it is hard to use because there is no command to make it do so. Courage happens when the time is right. No one knows what courage truly looks like until the moment arises and it looks may different ever time. Courage could be called a strength from within. In the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee presents this idea of courage or doing something that you are not used to or that is out of your comfort zone through the characters Atticus Finch, Ms. Dubose and Boo Radley.
The average person spends over one-third of their life sleeping, and over this period of time he or she can have over 1,825 dreams (Wicklinski). By definition, dreams are mental images, thoughts, or emotions that are experienced while sleeping. In the beginning, dreams were thought to be messages sent from the gods or spirit world. Researchers now have many theories explaining why people dream. Many of these theories explain that dreams can resemble an individual’s sensory experiences or even secret wishes. All people dream, but only 42% of people can recall their dreams from the night before (“Dreams”). The study of dreams is a topic that is constantly being debated by researchers for many reasons. Dreaming is important because it can impact people’s health, provide insight into what they are feeling, and reveal information about their behavior.
In my first draft for “Death Constant Beyond love”, my points were vague and seemed to be repeated in different parts of the paper which seemed that I had multiple statements. However, I did a deep analysis through my paper and located the key points of my ideas to create an outline that will drive the reader to only one conclusion, my thesis statement. In this essay I found my weakness but with hard work and multiple writing assignments I improved in a way that now I can focus in only one idea. For instance my thesis statement in this essay was contrasting as I wrote:
Have you ever wondered why you dream and how you can sometimes direct it? Maybe you have wondered if your dream has any true meaning to it. You are not the only person who has these questions. These questions come up a lot when psychologists discuss the topic of dreaming. The topic of dreams and lucid dreaming has been around for hundreds of years. There have been many books and journals solely devoted to dreams and how they affect people today. The goal for this paper is to answer and explain the questions (Why do you dream? Can you direct your dreams? And do dreams have meanings?) using journals, books, and other resources written by widely known psychologists such as Sigmund Freud.
The concept of evolution surrounds us and is used to explain many behaviors and helps us to gain understanding of life’s history, but still people have many misconceptions when it comes to considering the theory. Some of the most common ones, which I have previously discussed, include that it is always progressive, that life evolves randomly and that survival of the fittest is simply about the strongest or biggest animals. Whilst some features of these ideas are correct to an extent, they are mostly inaccurate, and the fact that these are widely believed concepts it suggests that they are commonly thought amongst
there is no way I could write what I had thought because I tend to forget after a few second. I am able to write down certain words I could remember but I cannot expand on them quick enough for me to actually start a few sentences. Reading while taking side notes is one of the best way I have found that has help me in building words together to form sentences even if my thought sometimes gets clustered with so many ideas. When I do have more material for my papers I must stop what I am doing and quickly write them down before I forget, later I could go back to what I wrote and expand to make them into sentences and even paragraphs. There are also times where I could write down couple of things and just expand on them for a while but then it begins to fade and I must go back to the last few things I had writing to get inspired
making a final copy. In order to create a good paper you need organize your
Despite the fact that lucid dreamers are in their dreams, they are not altogether of it. This allows one to confront face-on otherwise fearful nightmares and anxieties, allowi...
I stared at the blinking cursor, unbelieving at what I had just done. I was indeed done; done with a paper I agonized over for 6 hours. The paper was due in a scant 4 hours and I had all week to do it. The radio had stopped working because my brother got on the Internet and thus cut off my connection. That was the least of my problems working on this paper. I got it done, though. My life changed with one trip of a teacher to the chalkboard and one phrase, narrative essay. God, I hate narrative essays.
Each night, visions inhabit our minds during sleep and vanish with the morning light. These visions, these dreams, are without substance. Often, the waking mind recalls dreams only vaguely, if at all. A complete, separate world seems to exist within each of us; a world that can only be found through sleep, through dreams. What are dreams? Why do some people find nightly reverie in the comfort of their beds, while others dread sleep, terrified of the content of their dreams, and yet others recall no dreams to fear or fancy? Speculations on dreams are common and vastly variant. Some people imagine that their dreams are prophetic, while others insist that dreams are merely random firings of neurons. Perhaps a more encompassing view of dreams is appropriate. Neural firing causes dreams, but the randomness of dreams is questionable, since dreams are often correlated with the immediate emotional state of the dreamer. The theories that are presented here do not completely explain dreams. There are many missing pieces to the puzzle of the mind, and our theories on dreaming still have rather large holes.
We also welcome proposals about the effects of dreaming on the dreamer, and the resulting emotions, behaviors, and actions taken or foregone in response to dreams.
...do this very well at all. However, as I continued working on my math assignment, I experienced a light-bulb moment. I knew what to do next, and how to do it. This was fantastic; I had gone from not knowing how to do something, to knowing exactly how to do it in only a moment.
I learned the importance of making several drafts for one paper. Every writer can always make improvements because a paper is never perfect on the first draft. At least three drafts should be made before submitting. Secondly, it is important for ideas to be organized. One idea should smoothly transition into the next for the reader to easily understand the author’s arguments. Thirdly, it is helpful to have others give corrections on the student’s paper. Asking the professor or peers for critiques allows to see possible errors and ways to make the paper