Journal 21—Post-Peer Review
For revision of essay 3, post-peer review, I decided to take the comments and suggestions of my peers and completely follow exactly as they had suggested. I gave them my essay at around 1,000 words (so definitely not finished). I had also been scattered and all over the place with ideas and unfinished quotations. One of the things that I had a harder time on was specifically getting the right text-on-text moments as are required in this essay to help strengthen an argument. After talking about Jonathan Foer and his wife’s confusion on what she considers an animal or not, then agreeing with such, I had a hard time finding a source that would help strengthen my argument. With the suggestions of my peers, I chose a piece from Consider the Lobster by DFW talking about how animals “feel” pain and what necessary anatomical components go into such. I felt as though this would strengthen my argument as before the DFW quote is even introduced in my essay, I brought up the odd definition issues with the word “animal” itself and how it’s both inclusive and exclusive. I thought that having an anatomical definition, as given by DFW, would help solidify the argument with known scientific facts.
Another issue I’ve had with this essay is surrounding my quotes with sufficient background knowledge to help ease the reader into the quote itself without it being “dropped.” Around my fourth paragraph talking about death, I dropped the NPR article and a quote from it without any prior sentence to introduce the topic. This confused both of my peer reviewers and myself as well. I’m currently working on a good transition (as this quote somewhat starts the beginning of this paragraph itself.)
The last issue for me was trying to bring all my sources into the introduction for clarity of the reader so they knew exactly what I am trying to write in the first place. With my sources laid out clearly, the reader can tell what the essay contents are going to provide and perhaps the topics I’m writing about. This may help with both my purpose and my credibility on the get-go, as well as helping my thesis statement sound a tad bit stronger.
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