The way that I revise my work now has changed drastically since high school. When I used to revise, I would just focus on sentence level things, known as local revision, which I still do now but it’s not the only thing I focus on. When I revise, I look for things to add that can make my argument much stronger, and I do this by starting with my peer review comments. A lot of the time, my peers have a different perspective on what I’m writing, which gives them an advantage on the opposing side which then allows me to make my argument stronger. In my essay about joy, there was a part where I mentioned division in the world, but I didn’t add any details or examples surrounding that point. When I went to revise my essay, I was able to look at that section and add in examples that I felt were relevant in today’s world, and also would provide context for the type of division I was thinking about. I noticed that after rereading my entire essay, it felt stronger and more powerful to me. It also emphasized my claim and made it more convincing. I noticed my revisions helped my points get stronger in the first essay as well. I wrote about empathy being overrated, and my conclusion was not doing what I wanted it to do. There wasn’t much peer review on my conclusion to help me get started with revising, but I was able to come up with some ideas that really helped bring closure to my essay. Looking ayt both of these revisions side by side, you can see how I have grown as a writer and made my revisions mean something more in the grand scope of my essay, as the revisions made on the joy essay furthered my points and were embedded in evidence paragraphs instead of the conclusion.
An Example from my Joy Essay that shows how I was able to add a few sentences to make my claim clear.
This example is from the Empathy is Overrated Essay, and it shows how I was able to revise and fix my conclusion to make it much better and useful.
