My second essay for Rhet 105 was more difficult than the first essay since I had to make a powerpoint and write an essay for the assignment. It was quite difficult for me to write a research paper that required so much time and research. I had to find a total of eight sources, and they had to be from different places; for example, I found sources on the web, library, and library database. I actually received a higher grade than my first essay since I got an 89.25/100. I lost points for simple formatting mistakes and making some minor grammatical errors. I lacked detail in some areas, and I did not correctly identify the sources as popular or scholarly. I needed to fix minor and major formatting errors in my citations as well. I did not need to correct my powerpoint since it was above average and was a good representation of my essay. There were not that many errors on there. However, I will edit my essay portion and present the mistakes I made.

The first revision I made was that I changed the title to “Fixing Violence in Chicago: Annotated Bibliography” since I needed to be more specific with the title; additionally, I removed the underline in my title since I do not need to underline my own title, and I am using MLA format. Next, I removed the two extra sentences in my thesis, so I could have a good working thesis. The sentences were making it worse and were unnecessary. Next, I changed “reveal” to “reveals”. I added the word “negative” to provide a more specific relationship between violent neighborhoods and violent teens. I fixed the sources by making sure to italicize it is a book, movie, and periodical title while I put quotation marks around articles, stories, and other short works. I changed “fire arm” to “firearm” since it is one word. I changed the word “little” to “few”. I changed source #3 from being a scholarly source to being a primary source since it is reporting something that happened. I took out a sentence about my opinion since I personally thought it was ironic. I changed source #4 from being a scholarly source to being a primary source since it is also reporting something that happened. Finally, I changed “bias” to “biased” since I used a noun instead of an adjective.

It was quite helpful of Ms. Hays to provide feedback and explanations for my errors. I looked at all of my mistakes and made sure that I corrected all of them. I changed everything that Ms. Hays told me, and I learned from them. My thoughts changed when I realized that I made a lot of simple mistakes and could of got an A. It was upset with myself when I saw that I lost points for italicizing something when I did not need to. The most essential part that worked out for revising my essay was that I needed to look over my grammar and fix my citations. I should of asked my peers for help when I did not know how to cite a source, and I should have had them check for any grammatical errors. There were simple mistakes that prevented me from getting an A; therefore, I regret not being more careful with my work. I will learn from my mistakes.