Important Revising

The research paper that I am currently writing has to be written in APA format. Right now the only thing APA about my paper would be the citations. I haven't really broken my paper up into the way that an APA paper needs to be written in. So, as a result, my current very important revisions to my paper are to actually get in written the way that it is suppossed to be written!

Academic writing vs. non academic writing

I don't think that I really enjoy academic writing. When I was younger English was always my favorite school subject, but now I find that to be less true. I wonder if this is a result of the type of writing that I have to now do in school. When you are younger, generally you are allowed to turn any piece of writing into something fun. Now I just feel like it is hassle. It is just one more thing that needs to get done after going to class, work, and everything else that a typical day brings. It is really hard to find the fun in writing when you are so dependent on the grade that will eventually be attached to it!

Research

When I am researching a topic for a paper, it takes me forever. I will go to the library, email teachers, look through pages of databases (most often infotrac). I try to look at everything I can and I am not very fast at sorting through information. It always stresses me out, because I want to make sure that what I am looking for is the same thing that my teacher would be looking for. In the end it usually works out right, but it is not a nice clear-cut road to get there. In the complete opposite direction of scholarly writing research, when I just want to know a fast fact I will go straight to google, press the "I feel lucky" button and hope for the best!

Argument essay reflection!

Overall I struggled the most with having enough to put into my essay. I just felt that there was so much information that wasn't important. Looking back at on it I could probably have chosen a better audience to have written to. One thing that I did do in my essay that helped tie in my audience was that I kept telling them that I have been in their shoes and know what it feels like to have to be in middle schooler and have to write that first research paper. In future essays what I need to work on the most would be to make my essays "bloom" I thought that I had a lot of good ideas, but I also felt that they were just thrown into the paper and not really developed any further. It's just a skill that will hopefully get better as I practice more writing!

Revising

The biggest problem with my letter was that it didn't really appeal to my audience. I am writing it to Middle School students that are writing their very first research paper and might want to know if they should use Wikipedia as a source. So it is hard to develop a letter that doesn't make me sound like I only have a middle school education when writing to Middle Schoolers. What I trying to so to solve this problem is define a lot of what would be new vocabulary to them within the context of my letter. Hopefully it all will come together by Friday morning before 8:30!

Essay #1

I think that what I am struggling most with this essay is the length. I am finding it hard to balance the sincerity of my letter with making it longer. I know that there are ways to add more depth to my paper, but I am finding it hard to figure out a way that I like. I guess am have until Friday, so I will just keep on attempting to create a legitimate way to increase the length of this letter.

Why do I have to write about this. . .again?

Standardized tests! They are probably the very worst thing about high school. Not only are they monotonous, but the writing portion seemed to be one of two topics: Patriotism or vending machines in school. I feel that I have written about thirty essays on whether schools were should be allowed to have vending machines in the building. With every year that I was forced to write a paper on this subject my opinion never changed. I guess that with every year my arguments got stronger but I still hated writing on the subject!