Month: December 2017

Jacob Hickey

English 110-H4

Professor Miller

Learning Outcome 2

Over the course of the semester, I have learned how to integrate quotes into my essays using specific words and phrases that will nicely set up my point while making it clear both who is speaking and how they are saying it. I have found that using quotes requires presenting enough of your own ideas and explanations in the text that you, as the writer, understand the topic you are quoting. During this semester, we have read excerpts from the informative book, “They Say/I Say”. There is one particular chapter about integrating quotes called, “The Art of Quoting”. This has been an extremely helpful tool to use when writing essays. It not only tells the reader how to properly set up quotations and analyze the quotes being used, it gives examples that clearly indicate the correct way in which to complete these.

By continuously attempting to improve my writing through use of quotes, as well as adding analysis and transitions, I have found I have become more comfortable, since the first major writing assignment, introducing quotes and giving my own perspective on the piece being analyzed. In this example from my essay “Reconsidering the Lobster”, I identify the speaker and add adjectives to describe his tone. After the quote is complete, I add my own thoughts and analyze how the quote is relevant to my thesis and to the main topic in order to establish that I understand what is being quoted and have given it thorough consideration. I write, “Wallace calls into question the morality of cooking lobsters while still alive, pondering, ‘Is it alright to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?’ (503). While humans do kill animals for our own physical needs, people ignore the fact that a life has been taken. It is as if the execution never occurred because truthfully, we cannot bear to consider killing another being, thinking of ourselves as murderers. Perhaps this is why many cooks leave the kitchen after putting a lobster in boiling water. It is challenging for us psychologically to think of loss and death. The finality that is associated with this subject has us longing to never deal with it”.

In this example of my own essay, I introduce the quote and show how it is important in providing evidence to my thesis statement, “Death can leave people feeling very alone and abandoned. It can envelope you like a cloak, making you feel isolated and deserted. It is a painful subject to address, bringing many awful emotions to the table. This is why we avoid, rather than face. Doughty remarks in her interview that the “most shocking thing wasn’t so much the decomposing bodies or the strange bodies that I saw, it was that I was alone and I was sending all these people off to their final disposition” (Doughty). What makes losing someone incredibly tough is not the actual death, it is knowing that you will never be able to talk, see, or hear from these people again”. It is very important to thoroughly think through all of your sources and find which one will best support and enhance your thesis idea. Using a quotation creates more reader interest by painting a more vivid picture of the point one is trying to make and providing an example to bring one’s thesis statement to life.

Jacob Hickey

English 110-H4

Professor Miller

Learning Outcome 1

In Sommers’ selection, she highlights the importance of revision being a process. She writes, “Such blindness, as I discovered with student writers, is the inability to ‘see’ revision as a process: the inability to ‘re-view’ their work again” (Sommers). I have found this to be very true over the course of the past semester in my English 110 class. I found that writing takes time; it does not happen overnight, as it did in high school. We cannot get away with that here because it will be evident that the writing was not thoroughly thought through. This was especially obvious to me in my final essay about “Reconsidering the Lobster”. For such an in-depth and thoroughly written piece where many sources needed to be examined and contemplated, there was no way one would be able to quickly complete such a paper. It took weeks to fully ruminate over the topic. Especially true was the fact that I needed to find the shape of my argument as Sommers highlights, “experienced writers describe their primary objective when revising as finding the form or shape of their argument” (Sommers). In this final essay, I needed to re-write my whole introduction and thesis, because I found that what I was thinking about and had an opinion on further in my essay was not what my thesis stated. It took a long time and much trial and error to find the exact words to convey my thoughts. This is my final thesis of Paper 3: “Any discussion of loss has us wishing for thoughts of happier times. This is the reason we are so oblivious to certain issues. We are selective in what we want to hear and see. We are afraid to open this “curtain” of despair which may reveal unwanted thoughts, emotions, and feelings, hounding us with perpetual guilt and leaving us to question what could have been”. By allowing ample writing time, one thinks of many things that could be added to or re-worded in an essay to make it even better. Another thing that I have learned, not only in English, but in all classes, is that work is not done well when thrown together all at once. Quality work is done when the brain has enough time to process everything clearly. I have learned that time is a writer’s friend and that writing is a process. You may discover other pathways that lead away from and back to your original thesis and thought, but you will not truly know and understand this unless you give time to your writing and think through all possibilities.