My first essay for Rhet 105 was not the most difficult essay since I had to go to a museum and research about a certain topic. I studied the topic of Canelos Quichia people and how they used figurines to represent certain cultural beliefs. I received an 88.5/100 because of formatting errors and lack of deep analysis. I needed to be more clear with my argument and provide a stronger analysis of what I wanted to present to the audience.

The first revision I made on the essay was that I took out the underline on the title and added the subtitle of “analysis”. I did not need to underline the title because it was MLA format, and I needed to add the “analysis” part since it would help identify what kind of essay I was writing about. Another revision I made was that I took out the first citation in the second paragraph since it followed material from the same source. I added “my claim” to “the evidence helps support my claim” since it was not clear what the evidence was supporting and what was significant for providing the evidence. I changed a sentence in the first paragraph of page two to “my warrant would be that there are gender norms and gender stereotypes in the society”. I changed the sentence to make it more specific as to what men and women were supposed to do since women were supposed to do certain tasks, and men were supposed to do certain tasks. I wanted to identify the value and give examples right after. I changed the words “are seen as” to “represent” since the words were too choppy and had passive voice. I added a question mark to the question “why can they not be more involved with the celebratory part of the festival?”. I added the sentence “men were supposed to do one kind of activity while the women did another” to further explain the backing of the support since it was not clear and needed more analysis. I removed the sentence “they are essentially just maids or further help to the men” since it was too close to my own opinion and thoughts. I wanted to make it clear that it was an argumentative essay but was not necessarily bias. I removed “in conclusion” in my last paragraph since the audience already knows it is my conclusion, and it could be consider cliche. Lastly, I fixed my citation at the end of my essay since it needed a hanging indent and was formatted wrong.

It was helpful that Professor Hays provided an explanation for all my mistakes and errors. I looked at all my mistakes and made sure that I could make some corrections; I changed everything that Professor Hays pointed out since she knew what was best for my paper. My thought process has changed because I thought I revised the essay perfectly before turning it in; however, there were some minor mistakes that costed me my A. Therefore, I received a B+ because I was careless and missed a lot of simple mistakes. The most essential piece that worked out for revising my essay was that I needed to make sure to read over my essay a couple of times and see if I could take out anything nonessential. I read over the essay and realized that I needed to have a deeper analysis and be more specific in certain areas of the essay. I learned that I need to go back and revise my essay before I turn it in; therefore, I should ask for more peer editing help from my peers and professor. There were simple mistakes that could of easily gotten me an A. I will learn from my mistakes and prevent them for the future.