1. My final thesis was: While I believe there are many benefits of social media, such as facilitated maintenance of modern relationships, the negatives, exemplified by proliferation of parasocial relationships and hate speech, are showcased and enabled by the platform social media provides. I think its strengths lie in its specificity; I directly address the points I’m going to discuss further in detail in the body of my essay. A weakness of the thesis may be the lack of conciseness. I always think things can be more concise and still get my message across, so that’s something to work on in the future.

2. I remembered that my first draft usually contains a lot of ideas that I can’t fully express in my page limit. I struggle with getting all of my thoughts into an essay, especially when it’s on a topic I feel well versed in. One of the good things about my process is that I am able to generate a lot of detail and depth behind my arguments, especially when creating a first draft. However, I struggle to pick and choose which details to keep and which are weaker and should be left behind.

3. I focused most on sentence level revision as I felt the flow of my essay worked well in the draft. Some changes I made we adjusting topic sentences to cut down on some sentences, change the wording and order of words to ensure that a reader won’t trip over themselves while reading my piece, and adding more focused (rather than general) analysis to my quotes. An example of where I changed the wording of a sentence is:

Before: As I left high school, I found myself in a tremendous period of change and development, losing what I felt were close connections to good friends as we split onto different paths. One of the things that helped me cope with these changes was to connect with friends through social media. By sharing content, I think they would enjoy, I am able to maintain the relationship we had in person while being hundreds of miles apart.

After: As I left high school, I found myself in a tremendous period of change and development, particularly when it came to maintaining connections with my close friends as we split onto different paths. Social media allowed me to stay connected with my friends by sharing content I think they would enjoy and facilitating communications, preserving the relationship we had in person while being hundreds of miles apart.

4. I might approach Paper #2 by first being aware of the prompt prior to doing my readings so that I can keep it in mind as I annotate. I will also be sure to write more detailed comments on quotes that I find particularly strong, as stronger detail in annotations will make the paper easier to write. I think also writing down big ideas as I come across them will be helpful; For example, if I come up with a strong argument while reading/annotating one of the new writings, I want to be sure to write it down and come back to it later. I think my approach to Paper #1 was ok, especially since I did not struggle to get a lot of ideas and details behind those ideas.