Learning Outcome #1 Recursive Process:
My second formal writing assignment, titled “How does the use of social media affect teenage girls?” demonstrates my ability to revise in a variety of ways. One of the main ways that this assignment shows my ability to revise is in the introduction paragraph. It started out as a very long paragraph, having what felt like multiple theses in my first draft. So, after peer review and I started that paragraph over. I decided to rewrite my thesis to make it shorter, but more effective. I think that after taking that step, what I was writing about became more clear, and I believe that my thesis would catch the readers eye more.
After that I then built my introduction paragraph around my thesis and added in some of the resources I used as well. An idea that I stuck with and developed throughout the paper was how social media can affect how girls view their body. I thought that I was a strong idea that had multiple sides to the argument, and I could go very in-depth with it. I felt like I did a respectable job going in and adding real life statistics from research studies as well. Overall, this was a good topic that I started out with in my first draft and did a good job of building up in the final draft.
Like I said in my first paragraph, my thesis was not super clear, and I was slightly overdeveloped. I believe that this continued to make my paper more confusing. The theme of big chunks of writing continued throughout my whole paper in the first draft. Since my topic could be something that I could talk about for days I just kept rambling on. To make my paper clearer and more organized, I ended up splitting some of the paragraphs in half and made them their own separate arguments. I ended up adding another paragraph in my final draft that was more in-depth about cyber bullying and how that affects teenage girls detrimentally. I think that adding that detail added even more depth to my paper.
Learning Outcome #2 Integrating Ideas:
My second formal writing assignment, titled “How does the use of social media affect teenage girls?” shows my ability to integrate a variety of various sources to help support my argument. In this essay I used four different sources to improve my argument. I used Sherry Turkle’s “The Empathy Diaries”, “The Social Dilemma”, “The Impact of the Media on Eating Disorders in Children and Adolescents” by Anne Morris and Debra K Katzman, and the podcast “Phones Are Good, actually” by Taylor Lorenz. Throughout this paper, I point out the relationship between the use of social media, and how that has contributed to poor mental health in teenage girls.
Using “The Social Dilemma”, and “The Impact of the Media on Eating Disorders” I point out how social media can create a terrible place for teenage girls, and how it can shape the perception on how girls view themselves. I specifically use Sherry Turkle’s “The Empathy Diaries”, to emphasize cyber bullying. I also used it to prove how all teenagers these days lack a sense of empathy and how that can contribute to cyber bullying. Throughout my paper I added my analyses and opinions, which were based on what I read in all of those articles. I also used these articles to contribute to my thesis, and back up what I claimed.
Overall, I believe this essay shows my ability to take different sources and connect them together to improve arguments. Another example I can give that proves this is between Sherry Turkle and Taylor Lorenz. I connected the two by talking about empathy, and how society lacks that. I then add in a clip from “Phones are good, actually” talking about how cell phones have increased anxiety in teenage girls. I connected the two by talking about how nobody is scared to hold anything back anymore, and it makes social media a mean place. I then talk about how anxiety can be inducing to teenage girls.
Learning Outcome #5 and #6 Citations and Local Revisions:
Something that I never really learned in high school, that I was able to learn about was how to properly write in-text citations. I wasn’t aware that you don’t put any punctuation after the last quotation mark, and you actually just add it at the end after you cite who the quote was by. In my final draft, I cleaned up the citations to make sure they were correct. In my first draft, I had a couple run on sentences and unfinished body paragraphs. I went back through before I submitted my final draft and split up the run on sentences and added more depth to the body paragraphs. To finish some of the paragraphs, I had to add more in-text citations. With the addition of more citations I believe that it fully pulled my paper together, making it full circle. In my conclusion, I had to focus on making sure I didn’t have any run on sentences and that I finished with a strong closing statement.
