Thank You Ms. Swift!

I visited the writing center about two weeks ago.  At this point, my paper consisted of about three paragraphs; an introduction and two body paragraphs.  During the visit Ms. Swift and I edited my introduction and first body paragraph.  My introduction needed only a little work. All of the analysis and performance pieces needed in an introductory paragraph were in the right place. My biggest struggle was accurately and descriptively telling my reader how the stage was set up.  This included lacking detail about where my audience was in relation to where the action on the stage happened.  In addition, I had to fix some of my ideas and sentence structures to make them more concise.  In my first body paragraph, I worked on describing the double monologues with the goal in mind that any reader, having seen our performance or not, would understand how the stage was set up.   Along with painting an accurate picture in the reader’s head, I wanted to accomplish an accurate analysis of the quotes from the double monologue and how it was related to the mirroring effect.  

Based on this visit to the writing center, I am working on adding many details, even if I feel the details are too much.  I have to keep in mind that most  people who will read my paper have not seen our performance.  In order for them understand the analysis and the connection that I am trying to draw between Romeo and Juliet, I need to describe the performance as clearly as possible in my paper.  My group’s performance was very abstract from Shakespeare’s written work.  As a result of this difference, it was difficult to describe it so the reader can grasp my analysis and how this analysis was examined through the performance.  In addition to adding these needed details, I found that I should look at my work after I am done creating descriptions because some descriptions were becoming cluttered.  To strengthen the draft of my paper, I need to reread through the rest of my work  that was not looked at during my writing center visit.  While rereading, I should ask myself two questions: “Is this descriptive enough for my readers to understand?” and “Can I find any clutter?”  From here, I will edit my paper accordingly.  

    In the future, I might visit the writing center to get helpful feedback on drafts of papers.  This may be difficult for me to do often because I’m full IB.  Not only do I have little free time, but I also am not allowed to get comments on many of my papers.  Besides Literature and Performance class, I also have to write a large amount of papers for high level English class.  However, many of these papers are supposed to be written and revised by the paper with minimal extra help.  In conclusion, while the writing center is a great resource and I would like to use, I can, unfortunately, only use it so often.