MY PROCESS | Eng 1102 Portfolio

MY PROCESS.

INTRODUCTORY REFLECTION.

The process of revising my This I Believe essay was quite a bit stressful because of how personal the piece is, therefore it had to sound just right. Taking a strong belief of yours and putting it into words is not always the easiest thing to do, which I learned with this assignment. My first draft was a mess of thoughts and descriptive sentences here and there with ideas popping out from different corners of the page. The first draft was simply my thoughts about real books poured onto my laptop screen. It made a bit of sense, but it definitely needed some revising before I took it in for my peers to read. My peers gave me different ideas of what I could change, but my professor’s advice helped the most because it helped me understand where I should elaborate on certain thoughts. The revisions that happened to this piece were more of adding thoughts to it rather than taking things out. I had difficulty with this though because I did not want to elaborate too much on a point and make it seem like I was stretching the thought out for a higher word count. Every sentence in this essay had to fit well. Every sentence has a purpose and meaning and contributes to the essay as a whole. I had to make sure that if I was going to lengthen a point that it did not bring the essay down or make the essay revolve around that one point.

THIS I BELIEVE ESSAY.

I believe in flipping through pages rather than swiping a finger across a lit screen.

I enjoy picking between a paperback and a hardback. I tend to purchase the hardbacks because paperbacks are much more delicate. I believe in the use of bookmarks. When I was little, Harry Potter would mark my pages and now Thoreau has that job. Bargain bookstores fascinate me because you can find the classics for $3.35. I like the feeling of thumbing through pages and holding a book in both of my hands. The weight or size of a book is indifferent—it’s the words inside that define it. I feel happiness when looking at one of my novels and being able to tell that I read it countless of times because of the creases in the spine and how worn out the pages look.

When on a flight, I look at the business men and women with their electronic readings and I get confused and a bit irritated as to why they cannot just read a real book. Then I realize that maybe they love reading so much that they can read up to five books on one long flight and simply do not have enough space to carry them all. Our younger generation is so heavily reliant on electronics that they are more likely to read something on a device rather than a real book.

I can’t help but love smelling a book that has not been opened for ages. That old, musty aroma is like smelling flowers to me. The smell of brand new books is equally pleasant. You see, flowers and books are quite alike. They both acquire a distinct smell and when they are opened, they show their true beauty: flowers with their exquisite colors and books with their words. When a florist spends time with his or her flowers, they get caught up in their own world just like when a reader gets wrapped up in the world of the book in his or her hands. But that same effect cannot happen with words behind a glass frame because rather than leafing through all of the pages, you are moving your pointer finger across them.

Watching my collection of books grow each time I place a new one on my dark chocolate painted bookshelf excites me. I remember owning a petite bookshelf when I was younger that only had three shelves built in. I would pile books in it, on top of it, next to it, and all around it until it became this organized mess and my parents realized I needed a bigger one. Now, I own one with six shelves and I realize that it’s still not enough. The excitement of seeing stacks of books grow around you cannot happen when reading on a device. Having “libraries” that are just files of books on one tablet does not seem as pleasing as holding a paperback with rich smelling pages waiting to be flipped through.

I believe in reading the old-fashioned way. I believe in reading actual books that you buy at a bookstore or check out at a library. But regardless of how you read, I believe in reading. I believe in reading real books, with real pages that make the story you are reading feel so real and true that you become part of the story.

The main revision in this paragraph was in the first sentence. I added one more specific belief to the beginning of the paragraph to start it off in a more descriptive way. The other revisions had to do with word choice.

The main revision here was the final sentence. At first, I sounded a bit condescending to the younger generation, which was not my intent at all. I had to change the wording to make my point in a polite way.

In this paragraph, I mainly worked on the analogy between boks and flowers. By extending the analogy, I was able to be more descriptive and explain my thoughts to the reader more thoroughly.

Most of the revisions in this paragraph had to do with wording. I had to take out unnecessary words and had to insert a few more descriptive details that would help the reader visualize what I was describing.

The main part of this paragraph that was revised was the ending. In the original, it seemed abrupt because I had to keep to a word count. In this version it's extended, which adds more to the essay and allowed me to finish in a more meaningful way.