When I entered English 110, I had a very different idea of what the writing process was. In high school, I thought that my first draft had to be my final draft. Before writing my essays, I would write myself a quick outline and then sit down the night before it was due and write the entire essay. I would spend hours getting stuck on little mistakes and rewording the same sentences over and over again. I had never had a peer review session, teacher feedback before turning in my papers, or a free draft. English 110 changed my whole outlook on the writing process.
The biggest lesson I learned in English 110 was that your first draft does not have to be perfect. This lesson was emphasized during our first essay prompt writing process. I had a horrible time writing the first draft because I was hung up on the local revisions the entire time I was writing. I finally finished what I could and was ready to be completely embarrassed about having a “finished” product that I was not proud of. However, when I went into class and began peer reviewing with the global revisions, I realized that the little mistakes did not matter if you did not have a solid base. You could always fix the local, little wording and grammar mistakes at the end but the goal of reviewing was to help develop your thoughts and themes so you could produce an organized essay.
For the first draft of my “Significant Writing Project,” I was given global feedback in regards to the strength of my beginning paragraphs compared to the later ones. In the first couple of body paragraphs, there was a lot of depth and examples but as I progressed I did not reference the text as much and did not have the same quality of writing. Once I received this feedback I knew the areas that needed improving and they were relatively straightforward. I added more quotes and explained them to help strengthen my argument and had a more clear conclusion to help wrap up my argument. This feedback was so helpful for the final draft of my “Significant Writing Project” because I was able to make a more clear and organized argument without having to worry about the local details until the end.
