Anna Rys
Reflection: Personal Exploration of Fiction
The first I looked at when revising was the comments that Professor Mary made on my
graded essay. Overall, she said “To revise this essay you really only need to fix a few minor
formatting and punctuation errors.” So I read through my copy and changed the punctuation and
formatting issues that I mostly had in the in-text citations and the work cited page. I was pretty
bad at citing because I kept getting confused as to when I should underline or italicize titles.
Now, I’m a bit better at it (although I forgot to track these changes in my revision).
I have made changes in my thinking ever since beginning this project. I realized that I
need to take closer consideration of the rubrics that we are given instead of just looking at the
instructions. I also realized that what I wanted out of the paper was slightly different than what
Professor Mary wanted; I wanted it to be relaxed and simple whereas Professor Mary wanted to
gauge our writing abilities and our knowledge of using sources.
My revision process was similar to my writing process. I changed a few things and then I
changed them again, and then I reread my essay and changed a few more things. I looked at my
writing paragraph by paragraph and analyzed the content and the structure of sentences in each.
Then I made sure the paragraphs flowed and that I had adequate length.
I made a few little adjustments to the grammar and flow of many sentences, but the major
change in this paper was adding details. I decided to take my favorite books and talk about them
more instead of just saying “these are my favorites.” Simply listing my favorite books doesn’t
tell you anything about me or why they are important to me. I gave each book a separate
paragraph because one sentence each was not doing them justice.
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For Perfect Chemistry and Love and Misadventure, I talked about why I liked them and
how they made me feel.
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For the DaVinci Code, I added my opinion on Brown’s writing style and how he used the
literary device “framing” that we learned about in class to weave an incredible story.
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For Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I talked about how it makes me nostalgic and
comforted.
I took time revising this paper and I’m pretty happy with the result. I added explanation where I
felt they were due, and I also related the things I learned back into my real life.