My Final Draft and How It Came to Be

To really get to the backstory of my paper, we've got to look back about...two years. That's right. Two years ago I began to embark on my journey of utilizing the internet for purposes other than Facebooking. I created my Tumblr and started actively using it. It took a little while, but I started making "internet friends," following people who were doing Cool Creative Things that I cared about, and occasionally doing a few creative endeavors of my own. I gained followers who I could share things with and it was really fantastic to discover this whole creative world on the internet that I had never known existed.

This is the point in my life at which the internet became something more than merely a homework helper or a time waster. After joining Tumblr, the internet became a place that was intertwined with my life.
Around this time I also became a much more active YouTube viewer, particularly watching vloggers. Though their YouTube videos weren't necessarily creative content, most of the vloggers I watched created other things in their "real life" - like YouTuber and bestselling author John Green, for example. YouTube became a place where I could interact with people who I admired, and who were doing Cool Creative Things that I could consume.
Add in some Twitter action, and the internet was a place that was really important to me.

Behold: My Paper

Well ladies and gents, the time has come, the unveiling of my final draft! It was road with many turns and changes, which ultimately led to a finished product which I must say is far better than its predecessors.

It all began as I started musing about what topic had most captivated me during this term in my English class. I discovered that there were two themes which I was most interested in exploring: the literary worth of non-fiction and what we gain when we analyze romantic poetry in specific. Finding both subjects very interesting, I became torn as to which I would choose! My interest for the first one had arisen from rereading Elie Wiesel's memoir Night, and pondering about the literary elements that made it stand out.  The I became interested in the second as I embarked on my personal study of poetry, exploring different genres and analyzing different works.

I decided to inquire the help of my social media coupled with that of friends and roommates in order to chose between the two possible topics! First, however, I created a list of the different types of claims that I would make. I then carefully chose which I thought were best and circulated them. I tried not to do this too bluntly, though. For instance, when seeking for help in my personal blog I posed my claim as a thought that had been circling my mind and wanted to share to see if others felt the same way. When talking to my friends and roommates, I struck a casual conversation and snuck my claim in (if I would have told my friends it was for school, they most likely would have not been as engaged!)

When I finally decided on a topic that I would address for my paper (The analytical tool as observed in romantic literature), I moved on to developing it by first testing what I would specifically talk about. By using Dr. Burton's suggestions on how to develop a literary analysis, I began to move forward with my paper as I did some research on genre and literary period. I also performed a close reading that allowed me to identify literary elements that would later help me support my argument.

Having done this, I felt like I was on good ground to actually start my paper! I then went on to create an outline that greatly helped stay organized throughout the rest of the process of writing my paper. I proceeded to write a first incomplete draft to obtain feedback regarding the direction of my paper. I received great feedback from my peers, (specially Jennifer!) as well as my roommates who I gave physical drafts to.

I took their advice and fixed what they suggested, moving then quickly onto writing one of my final draft, which I again circulated amongst friends in addition to the peer review held in class (thanks again Jennifer!)

My friend's comments on my paper

Until, finally... I finished it!

From Musing Thoughts to Concrete Arguments

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch seemed to be calling me. I'd seen it in the "Great Gifts" section of Barnes & Noble at Christmastime, seen it at the top of "Must Read" lists on every book-selling website, and seen it on Pinterest with several thousand repins. When we were allowed to create our own reading lists this term, I decided it was finally time to read it. I checked it out from the library, a tattered burnt-orange copy that looked much older than 2008, with a frayed cover and worn pages from being dog-eared so many times.

I decided to begin with watching the original speech, which Pausch gave at Carnegie Hall. I first reviewed the book and posed the question "What would be my last words?" This would eventually develop into a thesis as I considered Pausch's last words and their authenticity. I began developing a thesis with a few different driving ideas, and posted them for opinions. I received great feedback from Jocelyn, Danielle, Sined, Dr. Burton, and Dawn, as well as the Goodreads page for the book and my roommates. Ultimately I decided on prompt #4 (the evaluation claim) because I felt it was an argument I could make logically and had solid textual evidence. I did, however, switch my view point to the book being the more authentic version after having my opinion changed from further reading of the text.

To begin writing the paper, I summarized the text. What points did Pausch make? What points did I make? What were the differences between the video and the book? I combed through the book line by line and marked spots where he talked about events prior to the speech, events in the speech's aftermath, and any reflections on the speech itself. This helped me to identify spots where I could make solid arguments.

Next, I had to answer the question why does it matter? Ultimately I came to the conclusion that Pausch felt there was more he needed to say after the speech in order to make his children fully understand, and that was why he wrote the book. It mattered because his message wasn't complete without the book. This became a central point to my paper.

After gathering notes and writing, I posted a draft and received feedback from roommates, classmates outside of class(thank you Sined!) and a great comment from Danielle. She brought up a great point that the book conveyed a range of Pausch's emotions as opposed to just the optimism in the speech. This also became a central point of my paper.

Overall, I'm happy with the way it turned out. I wanted to write in a way that was real and honest, yet still academic, and I think this paper achieves that.

The story of my nonsense paper

I got the idea for my paper while thinking about how to decorate my unborn daughter's nursery. That lead to a little research on the classic Winnie-the-Pooh stories which lead to some unpleasant comments on Good Reads that prompted me to defend such a fantastic piece of literature. You can read more on that here.

I started with a few different thesis statements to get the ball rolling. I came up with these after a close reading of Winnie-the-Pooh to determine what all the stories had in common and how I could implement that into a paper. I thought the biggest thing was the grammatical errors. That also seemed to be what people were complaining about in their Good Reads comments.

I got some great feedback on my thesis statements. The comment from my sister even lead me to what I thought would be my thesis. However as I continued to research, I realized there was more to the grammatical errors thing than originally met the eye. A second look at the Good Reads comments introduced me to the genre of Nonsense Literature.

Once I researched the genre a little more, I found that what I thought were grammatical errors were actually forms of implementing nonsense into the story. And from there, my new thesis was born. I was even able to compile all the quotes I thought were grammatical errors but turned out to be related to the genre. It was so helpful to do this, because I could see all the elements of the book I wanted to reference in my paper.

Then before I could begin writing the paper, I had to make an outline! I am HUGE fan of the outline. If I do enough research there, I've done nearly all the work of writing the paper. All I have to do is turn my half baked thoughts into complete sentences and BAM! I'm done. However once I started writing the paper and came up with a rough draft, I realized that my outline was a litte too detailed because I had too much information. It would have been great for a 10 page paper but for my 6 page paper, some stuff had to go.

After some serious re-working which included cutting and combining paragraphs, I came up with my final rough draft. But it was still rough which meant I still had some editing to do. I posted the draft in a google document and was able to edit it with guidance from my mom over the phone. It was cool because she could offer suggestions and then watch me make the changes from her computer in Georgia.

Once I was happy with how it looked, I created an after outline. This gave me a second look at the flow of my paper. It was interesting to see how the before and after outline had changed. Then in class, I classmate peer reviewed my paper and thankfully only had one big thing that confused him that I needed to fix. And what I came up with is a finished product, which I am happy to say is finished several days before it's due.

Now that's one of the best feelings ever!