Research Essay
Initially, I thought the first draft of my project 1 was bad but I was mistaken. Project 2 took the win. I thought Project 2 wouldn’t be difficult because I knew which community I was focusing on and practically started with my first draft of project 1. I should’ve known. At first, I was having trouble finding sources for my annotated bibliography because the CARE program is specific to Florida State University. Yes, other institutions have summer bridge programs, but the CARE program extended beyond the summer semester. Mat suggested that I could use sources specific to something mentioned in my essay, which I did, and I ended up with ten sources, i.e. one spoke about summer bridge programs and another spoke about diversity. However, starting my interviews caused my work cited list to increase. Some interviews and sources didn’t make the final draft of my paper.
I went to the conference with Mat, during the first week of conferencing as I did before with project 1, and I brought my community profile with me. I always aim to have something done before going to a conference or an appointment at the writing center because I use feedback to get quality work done and that cannot happen if there isn’t any initial work to get feedback. I explained what I was doing and what I did in regard to my research essay and at that time I was on track.
Over spring break, I began writing my essay. Every draft I wrote wasn’t what I vision for my research paper. Yes, I had the word count, but my paper was practically a word count mess. I knew what I was writing about, but I couldn’t put it together how I wanted it. My friends called it writer’s block. Furthermore, my text was causing an issue as it kept on changing throughout the essay which because I was finding great difficulty in presenting the text. For some odd reason, I didn’t go to the writing center but now I’m thinking the paper wasn’t ready for the world. The deadline was approaching, and I had written the paper over a couple of times until I mustered the best I could knowing I might have to revise it again after Mat sees it. I was okay with this because I needed a break from the research essay.
After reading my paper, Mat said that my personal exigency was good, I was worried about writing too much about myself, but was texts were confusing and the mention of CARE’s vision as well. I received a passing grade on the paper and I contemplated revising the research essay because I was enjoying not having it to worry about. Eventually, I came to my senses and sent Mat a revised plan. I went to the writing center and showed my tutor both my essay and Mat’s feedback. She read my essay and said It wasn’t a bad essay it was good and all I needed was to rearrange a couple of sentences, add a few sentences especially one that explicitly states what the vision of CARE is. Also, she helped me fixed my citations.
Revising my essay, I decided to read the entire essay first. Reading the essay, I couldn’t believe I wrote all that mess and I laughed because I dubbed that draft as the best and it was horrific; I was wondering how bad the other drafts were. Starting the revision process, I created a new word document and worked on each paragraph, paying the most attention to the sections that Mat’s comments highlighted. I made sure to explicitly state the vision of CARE and I changed my tests to the materials that the CARE staff give to us rather than the CARE staff themselves. I had a hard time presenting the identities of the people within my community because they were either ashamed or embarrassed by their circumstances and I didn’t want to share their stories knowing this. I guess this is a reason why I spoke about myself the most.
When I got to the conclusion of my research essay, I realized that the CARE staff upholds the CARE program’s mission and not its vision because mission defines what they are doing while vision tells what they want to do. With this revelation, I replaced every mention of the word ‘vision’ to ‘mission’ and explicitly stated what the CARE program’s mission was. Proud to say my grade for the research paper went up.