My revision process has seen tremendous improvement since high school. The major focus of feedback was on the grammatical errors and punctuation in my earlier education. However, Writing 110 has helped me shift from this local revision to the more important global revision. When revising on the global level, my writing becomes more organized, cohesive, and my thesis is supported throughout the piece. Below, I have inserted a paragraph from my rough draft joy essay. 

Body Paragraph from Joy Essay Rough Draft

The paragraph has far too much summary and fails to answer the reader’s demanding question, “so what, why does this matter?” This class has taught me that I can always edit my ideas and evaluate their effectiveness. Once something is on the paper, it doesn’t have to stay. As seen in the following image, I eliminate some of my rambling summary of my grandfather’s stories. I address the readers’ needs by bringing more of my voice into the paragraph, which further ties the insightful stories back to my thesis of feeling joy through our senses and embracing the small moments. Though this paragraph may not be at its final version, it has progressed towards a more balanced amount of “they say” or my grandfather’s voice, and my own “I say,” as I’ve highlighted. Diving deeper into my own analysis has given my paragraph more purpose and nicely acknowledged the importance of my grandpa’s valuable stories.  

Improved Body Paragraph w/ My Voice from Joy Essay

Writing 110 has helped me use peer review comments and my own expanded knowledge to hone in on critiquing my essay’s organization, cohesion between thesis and provided evidence, and the balancing of voices. Then, I can go back to my high school focus of nitpicking the grammar, word choice, spelling, and punctuation to put the bow on top of my essay before gifting it to my audience. I address these local revisions in my revised paragraph as well as the larger scale issues I prioritized during the global revision step, which has advanced my revision process to the next level.