My first college paper has just been submitted, and honestly I am feeling pretty confident about it. The three draft process made it very easy to revise the paper. The biggest hangup I had while writing was being able to convey my point to the audience. I felt at some points that nobody would understand what I was even trying to say. Thats why the first draft is always the easiest to me because I don't have to include details. " Start by getting something- anything- down on paper." To me details and personal examples confuse the reader. They weren't there with you when you were doing these things, nor are they inside your head reading your mind. So with that I tried to give examples that everyone could relate with, and then go on from there. These higher order of concerns were definitely more of a challenge than I first thought.
The initial revision was rough because of all my lack of detail, but details are easy to insert when you have done the proper ground work. After that it was a breeze getting through the rest of the issues because majority of them were minor arrangement issues. Moving sentences or even starting new paragraphs solved them. The lower orders of concerns were also no problem because they were easy to find. The usual missing comma, capital letter and thing of that nature, all had to be taken care of. All in all this paper was about me, so how could you screw it up? Writing about you, and who exactly you are isn't that hard, just follow the steps, and you'll have the perfect paper in the end.
I also struggled to get my ideas to make sense. It sounded good in my head, but every time I would write something down it wouldn't make any sense when I read it back. This problem stopped on our second drafts. Once we had peer reviews I had much clearer idea of the direction I wanted to take my paper in and I was able to write faster and more efficiently.
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