*The first thing I did for all my drafts was consider what Professor Hays wrote. I felt that Professor Hays was the most direct source of insight for this revision task. Therefore, I always attempted to fix mistakes mentioned by Professor Hays before I tried to revise the assignment on my own. *

The majority of my mistakes came from my source boundaries. Professor Hays noted that many of the source boundaries were not clear. As a result, I review all my parenthetical citation and adjusted them accordingly. To fix my citations I included introductory phrases and deleted unnecessary parenthetical citations. My next step was to fix the general grammar issues in my paper. I made minor grammar issue by forgetting words, using dangling modifiers, not italicizing periodicals, using double negatives, creating singular/plural pronoun conflictions, using the wrong part of speech, using incorrect words and using passive voice. Many of these issues were easily fixed and did not require major revisions. A large part of my revisions came from fixing my thesis. After reading Professor Hay’s comments, I realized that my definitions were not clear. To fix part of the issue, I defined what I considered peer to peer interaction. To further clarify my thesis, I changed the use of the words “medium,” “facilitate,” and “induce.” Instead, I shifted explained my idea through the definition of correlation and causation.  In my original draft, it was not clear how profiling can relate to social media, so I added more detail and explained how the two intersected. In the next paragraph, I had the same issue so explicitly stated a scenario to demonstrate my point. I felt that adding these small details helped the audience understanding what I was trying to prove.

As always, I reread my paper to obtain a better understanding of my paper post initial revisions. Since Professor Hays provided such an exhaustive list of issue with my paper, I had trouble finding issues to revise on my own. Using Purdue Owl’s Hierarchy of Concerns, I was able to fix some Lower Ordered Concerns (Higher Ordered Concerns). Being much more familiar with passive voice and explicative, I was able to find and correct a large portion of my paper. Using the Banned Words Wiki and Vonnegut’s Advice, I found words that were redundant and sentences that repeated the same idea as the previous sentence. Deleting these words and sentences made my writing much more concise.  As I skimmed my paper one final time to correct minor errors, I realize social media played a large role in the recent attack in Paris. As a result, I decided to include new information regarding the attack into my paper. I considered myself the primary source of this additional information. I feel that the attack in Paris provided an accurate example of the extent of social media’s power and further proved the exigency of my topic.

As the final major paper of the semester, I felt that this was the most challenging paper. This paper was essentially an accumulation of all the past concepts that I learned. I felt that creating proper parenthetical citations challenged me the most. A large portion of the comments that Professor Hay’s highlighted related to my citations. Although I struggled the first time I wrote this paper, Profess Hay’s comments provided an excellent explanation to IQPPE. This paper also refined my research process. I found that creating synthesis papers and annotated bibliographies made writing the final research paper easier. Although only a few weeks have passed since I wrote this paper, my writing has definitely changed. After reviewing the comments that Professor Hays made, I feel that I need to be able to properly express my ideas. Although many ideas made sense in my head, I realized that I could have phrased my ideas more clearly so that all readers can understand what I am thinking. To improve this area of weakness, I plan on inviting others to read my paper before I turn anything in. By exposing my paper to outside opinions, I gain a different perspective of what my paper is truly saying. I hope to continue growing as a writer even after this final paper.

Citations:

“Higher Order Concerns (HOCs) and Lower Order Concerns                                   (LOCs).” Purdue Owl Online Writing Lab. Purdue Owl, 01 Mar.                   2013. Web. 02 Dec. 2015.