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.
