Editing My Essay

I like the suggestions which Rebecca made about my essay. I think that they make sense and I can see why she thought that they needed changed. It is important that my audience and purpose are clear from the beginning of the paper and not only after they are clarified half way through. So, now I have a clear idea of what major ideas to change for the paper.

What is Needed in an Essay?

I agreed with both of the articles which we read for homework in a lot of ways and liked what they were saying. 'Essayists on the Essay' was interesting because it showed how different authors viewed the essay themselves. Even essayists are not truly able to define what an essay is. I liked 'Encountering the Essay' even more because it kept my interest more. The paper was written with longer sections so I could read more about the different topics than when reading 'Essayists on the Essay' which was just short excerpts from longer writings. I liked how 'Encountering the Essay' gave a lot of background information and then compared how people used to write to how people write today. I agree that many authors feel important when they write memoirs and believe that it means that they are something special, when in todays world that is not the case at all because everyone writes them now.

As far as what I think is necessary in an essay, here are a couple of things:

1. It must be pretty clearly written, it should not be too confusing to read. That does not mean that the subject should not make you think or anything, but just that the writing itself should be easy to understand and follow.
2. There should be a strong central idea.
3. The author should know what they are writing about and what they are trying to convey to the reader.
4. It should be at least a little interesting to read most of the time, especially if it is a narative type essay.

Many of my ideas are similar to the ones which I already wrote about, and if I think of any other/different ones, then I will post them on here also.

Have a good day everyone!!

Audience and Purpose

For my essay, I think that I am going to write about transitioning from an all Jewish high school to a large, public, secular university. Before I state the reason for writing this, I want to give my audience. The essay is going to be intended for Jewish students who are still in high school and who are worried about the transition which they are going to make in the upcoming years. I have not decided if I only want to write to the students from my old school or not. The reason which I may decide only to write to them is because the school was special in the sense that it was a boarding school, and so I will be able to angle the paper a little differently.

The purpose of my paper is to basically give the students who will be reading it a sense of security that the transition to college will not be as hard as they think it will with regards to being surrounded by only people of the same faith as them. Although it is true that in college you will have to work a little harder to find other Jewish people, once you try to get involved with various groups on campus then it gets much easier. It is possible for anyone to find a group of friends in college, and if the kids coming from Jewish high schools need or want to make their group of friends primarily Jewish then that is alright. At this point I can mention Hillel and the goals of the organization.

So, although this is a very rough idea of what I plan to write for the essay and what I want it to be about, I think that it is going to work well. I will write an update when I figure out how I want to change this if at all.

My Thoughts About Essays

In my opinion, the most important part of an essay is the thesis. If you were to have asked me if I believed this before high school then I would probably have said that I did not even know what a thesis was. However, throughout high school all of my english teachers (particularly one teacher which I happened to have for three years) always said that the thesis was the central part of any essay. But along with the thesis you must also write to support your belief.

With all of that being said, I understand that there are many different types of essays, some of which do not necessarily depend on a one-sentence or few-sentence thesis. In my opinion though, some of these other types of essays, such as satires or narratives, can be more like a form of art than an essay itself. Although I know that they are essays, in my opinion essays are typically more academic or opinionated than some of these alternative types are.

Regardless of the type of essay which someone is writing, I believe that they all are supposed to serve a few main points - and that is to let people know about either something which the author believes in or to convince the reader of a different position in all types of situations.

Although it is not a rule, I believe that essays should be well-written and easy to follow. The reader should not get lost or confused in the middle of reading the essay, although often times if an author does not support their thesis well then this can happen because it can seem as if they are switching views/sides in the middle of the essay, which is never a good thing.

These are just some of my thoughts about essays. If I think of any other major things then I will add them later. I hope that you agree with some of my points!

Response to Comments

I agree with many of the comments which Grete made on my research proposal.

For example, there was on paragraph which she said did not make sense where it was and she did not see the connection, and although I later connected it better to the proposal, I need to make it clearer where it initially is or move it all together. The person reading the proposal should not be confused about something until it is later mentioned.

Also, near the end of the paper there is a paragraph so vague that she could not understand what I was trying to say. This is an issue which I need to fix and I think that it may be possible that because it was the end of the paper I was sort of running everything together and just trying to put words in as a way to get to the end of the paper.

And, with the conclusion, she recommended that I tie it back to the paper even more than I already do. I agree with this because the conclusion is another part to reinforce what you want to do and in reality it is probably one of the things which people will most likely remember because it is what they read last.

I am going to work out all of the issues with the research proposal but overall I feel as if I had a good grasp on it, which is a good thing.