1. Final Thesis: I believe that empathy is in fact overrated, tends to provoke the wrong response out of the public, misused, and can leave you feeling down and exhausted. 

Strengths: Specific and makes a direct stance, gives points for evidence in paragraphs.

Weakness: Could be a little more narrow and focused even more.

2. I learned a lot about how I revise and write paragraphs during this specific essay. When I write my first draft of the essay, I tend to be very structured from the get go, and get all of my points and quotes laid out where I want them. It almost looks like a final draft, just not to my standards. As I continue to revise it after peer review, I rearrange some elements, or specify further on my main ideas. I also tend to rework my intro a lot, because the more details I add bring up important things that I feel an intro needs. My intro is also very weak compared to the rest of my essay, and since it’s the first thing I write it is sloppy, unorganized, and has no details.

3. Something that I really focused on was my intro, because I didn’t know before that introducing the main texts and their authors in the intro makes your essay stronger. I found that I needed to rework my intro a couple of times after I added the text introductions because it made it sound really weird and didn’t flow well. I didn’t like how it seemed very monotone, boring, and choppy. I thought it was choppy because I wasn’t able to connect the points before and after the introduction of the sources until after I read it over and revised some more. I really liked how professional it made my essay sound after I read it over, because I’ve never introduced the sources together in an intro paragraph. I also focused on adding the TRIAC paragraph into the final draft too, because I figured it would allow a paragraph to flow more smoothly and also make it look nice on paper as it checked all of the boxes.

4. For our next paper, I really want to think about what the prompt is so that when I’m annotating I can make annotations that are even more specific to what I believe is important and would work as strong evidence. I also want to make sure that I remember to add the source introduction in my intro paragraph the first time I write it so I can spend less time rearranging my intro, and instead focus on the strength of my body paragraphs and my conclusion. I also think that my conclusion in general needs a lot of help, and I should dedicate a lot more time to making it more useful and helpful to my essay. It isn’t anywhere close to being the same length as my intro, and I know it should be, so I just need to set aside more time to focus directly on it. I think that I could have another person read it too, just to give me more feedback on what I’ve revised from the first peer edit, and my mom wants to help since she used to be a teacher and another set of eyes on it could improve the entire paper overall.