Revisit your early work and review your approach to revising early in the term and compare changes between your first and final draft of your chosen Chosen Work Sample as you prepare to write a section of your framing statement titled Learning Outcome 1. In that section, as the framing statement, explain how you have made specific changes that demonstrate your ability to engage in both global and local revision (about 250-500 words). What does this show you about your development? You will likely draw from the ways your class has discussed revision.
Revising as a whole has never been my strong suit. Editing and reviewing for my peers is easy enough, but actually looking at my own work to change it always made me feel tired and bored and, in some cases, ashamed of the quality of my work. So, I usually didn’t really revise my academic writing, merely composed ideas, quotes, and citations into an amalgamated outline to present to my peers, then later wrote out one draft based on all those ideas that became known as my “final” draft. However, especially with this last paper, I realized that this method, with the way I had been using it, wouldn’t work. I wanted to put more thought and effort into our last essay. Through this thought process, and partially the effort I tried to put into the peer reviews, I drew away from the simple “local” revisions, ones that were based much more around the parts of writing that were correct in the same way that an answer in math is correct; the spelling, grammar, punctuation, citation, format, all completely and undeniably perfect. “Global” revisions are much harder. They force you to read and analyze the text, understand and critique the author’s arguments or explanations. While I still have trouble with this more subjective ability, I have been trying to move towards it and put less effort into the local revision process. This is partly seen in some of my peer reviews, but much more in my own work where, once everything that can be correct is, there is no choice but to face my ideas and make them more compelling and understandable. Growth is hard to see day-to-day, but maybe seeing what I prioritized at the beginning of the semester and what I try to prioritize now is some proof of it.
