Monday, December 6, 2010
December 6th
Today in class we had to have our rough draft completed and printed. We spent the whole class self-editing our rough draft. Our homework for Wednesday is to have our completed final draft done and printed by the start of class. I found it very helpful to carefully read and mark all over my paper and make corrections. I think having a printed rough draft to edit is the easiest way to read and think about your paper without distractions or getting confused. I know that whenever I read things on my computer I can easily get confused, words get jumbled up, and I can't clearly think about what I'm trying to say. Getting a new perspective on things sometimes can be extremely helpful and eye opening. I decided to connect class today to a quote by Friedrich Nietzsche. He said: "You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist." I like this quote because I think it represents what we all our doing and feeling as we write our papers. We are trying to write deep, intellectual papers that really analyze The Scarlet Letter, and that's a hard thing. I think this quote can help remind us that we can search and search for the perfect way to say something, and we can try our hardest to write a perfect paper, but these things do not exist. This can also connect to what I said about a new perspective. Maybe what Nietzsche is saying is that we all have our own ways, but it's important to look at other perspectives. Maybe next time we edit, we should peer edit to see other perspectives and get their take on ours. A vocab word I would like to share is vantage point. It means a place or situation affording some advantage especially a comprehensive view or commanding perspective. Example sentence: Although you may think your vantage point is superior to those around you, it can not be certain until you look through their perspective.
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I think that quote fits perfectly with what we were doing as we wrote our papers. Printing them out and editing them the whole class really helped me catch some errors. I think peer editing would be a good thing to do because we get to see what other people's ideas are and how they wrote their paper.
ReplyDeleteI really like the quote you chose to describe how we're feeling about our papers. I know, during the really intense, thought-provoking time of the writing, I was feeling very frustrated because I kept trying to find the perfect way to describe something or get my point across. The thing about writing is that there is no right answer. It's not like math where everything is black and white-you either find the correct answer or you don't. Writing is opinionated and all about intellect. You cannot think to yourself "I have to find the exact right way to say this." Sure, strive for the best way to get your point across, but there will never be just an EXACT answer to what you're trying to convey to the reader. All we can do is explain it the best possible way we can and hope that the meaning of our analysis is captured.
ReplyDeleteThe quote you chose is a very true statement and a lot of people should really live by it. The self-edit was very helpful for me because I just really do not like having other people read my material before myself. Overall, I just really like the quote.
ReplyDeleteI believe that Taylor Dickey's thoughts on having a printed rough draft is the best way to edit your paper. I used this process in class and it really helped me catch my mistakes. I also think that peer editing is a great idea. I actually got a couple of people to peer edit my essay and it was very interesting how they caught the mistakes I could not find. Nietzsche's quote pertains to our papers and I think that it was a perfect fit.
ReplyDeleteI think bringing up the idea of perspective in peer editing is interesting.When others read your paper, often times they are able to provide a fresh perspective and interesting suggestions.It would behoove your paper to get another person's perspective on it.
ReplyDeleteSometimes some of us are such perfectionists (not necessarily in a bad connotation) that we get stuck within a line we are trying to "perfect" and word "perfectly." It helps to take a breath, do your best, remember that there's no such thing as an absolute right direction, and go back to it when you've cleared your frustration. The mind is a brilliant thing and to have other's contribution in analyzing something is always useful as long as you keep an open mind.
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