Back in high school, there really never was a “writing process” for me. Creating a rough draft was out of the question and my proofreading consisted of Microsoft Word’s spell check. When I had to write a paper in high school, I had one thing on my mind: to get the assignment done as quickly as possible. Sure, sometimes we were required to bring our “first draft” to class in order to peer edit but my classmates never took the revising process seriously and I always ended up leaving the room with my paper looking the exact same way as it did when I entered. Because of me and my fellow classmates’ lack of editing, I would turn in my first draft as my final copy without any corrections or revisions being made. However, although I never did any serious revising or changes to my papers, I always received a letter grade of an A or B. I think my ability to still make a decent grade on a paper without putting much effort into it led me to believe that revision was an unnecessary step and was only there to waste time.
Fortunately, I enrolled in Florida State for Summer C, and I finally realized how important the editing process was. My ENC1101 teacher set aside certain days specifically for peer editing. Now, when I looked at the class syllabus and saw that these days were just for revising, I immediately thought back to high school and how no changes would be made on my papers and I couldn’t help but think that I would be wasting my time again. So, when the first peer editing day rolled around, let’s just say I was anything but enthusiastic. As I traded papers with a fellow student, all I could think about was how disappointed I would be when I received my essay back from her with no corrections at all and just a ‘good job!’ written across the top. However, that was not the case. My classmate tore my paper to pieces. Her blue pen was everywhere on the pages and I don’t think I have ever been that happy for someone to criticize my work. Her revisions and notes she made in the margins really helped me expand and add detail to my essay. She helped point out the flaws in my paper that I normally would have overlooked. Thankfully, I have now realized that peer review is a lot more important than I first thought and I hope to better my own revising skills so I can aid my classmates.
To the point of the first paragraph, having the first draft and the final draft be one in the same was very common. As I mentioned in my post, I would just sit down and write the entire thing in one sitting, print it out, put it in my folder and then never look at it again until it had a big red letter on top. Likewise for me, I would receive usually an A or a high B for my lazily typed out papers. Looking back, I didn’t fair too badly in paper writing or English in general, but proof reading could have been emphasized a little more.
ReplyDeleteYour enc1101 class sounds incredibly similar to mine. I thought it would be a waste of time to have all of it spent on reading, going over, and correcting three other classmates’ papers. Unfortunately, my first college revision day wasn’t quite like yours. I was also one of the sleepy kids who had been out the night before and thought that their papers were absolutely perfect in ever y way and had no need for any type of revision what so ever. This unnecessary arrogance instilled a sense of duty in me to proof read their papers like no other. Sure enough, I was right; I tore up the poor guy’s paper, just like your classmate did, only with the red warrior. He fought many a battles through the words. After I finished the massacre, I handed my peer’s paper back and to my amazement, he read over it, and really appreciated the critiques and corrections that I had given him. This made me realize that even if you think that your paper is perfect, there will always be room for improvement. From my experience and I’m sure you from yours, proof reading is a vital and necessary step to every paper that you right.