For the final wrap on Formal Paper 1, I met up with Owen to review my essay and Dr. Albert’s comments. Based on the comments and suggestions, we were able to restructure my entire essay to defend my claim more effectively.
First and foremost, I was gratified to have my thesis called “fantastic”. I revisited the thesis multiple times, so it’s good to know that these rewrites were worth it. After all, the thesis is one of the most important parts of a paper, which sets up the foundation for the rest.
The body is where “more depth” could have been seen. Upon taking a step back and looking at my essay from a wider perspective, I saw that my first two body paragraphs had good content, but they were all abstract ideas. In fact, I was supporting Harley’s overall claim (from the prompt) with some of his smaller claims, instead of providing concrete evidence. Not until the last body paragraph did I truly start “making [my] own case” with the Evans map. Here’s the solution that Owen helped me come up with: instead of having the first two abstract paragraphs stand alone, I could write my next draft with the Evans map as the underlying framework of the paper. That is, I could analyze how all my ideas apply to the Evans map: the control of knowledge by the elite (governors in America, the monarchy in Britain), the political exploitation of maps (meddling by both sides for personal gain before publication), and the legitimization of land boundaries (colonial boundaries for America, expanded colonial territories/claims for Britain). Essentially, I would be taking my last body paragraph, which had the most developed ideas, and apply it to the entire piece.
Finally, we also worked on shortening my quotations, which I realized they were still quite long after cutting down on them before. It is so true that “[the] reader wanted to hear your words; not Harley’s!” Sometimes, I noticed that I actually provided analysis that discussed almost the same exact thing that I quoted from Harley, so it was easy to cut those parts out.
Overall, I feel that a next draft of Formal Essay 1 could be improved and polished with the Dr. Albert’s comments and Owen’s suggestions.
