During my workshop feedback, a couple of my peers noted that they wanted me to expand on my conclusion-- specifically the context surrounding my last sentence. To their points, I recognized that my essay ended rather abruptly, but I liked leaving the reader with the thought of "choices that have been pre-determined for them by others" as a way to open up my essay to allow the reader to think how this may apply in their life. Instead, I discussed the effects for college students of only getting to know people on the surface level. This ties into my last sentence because it forces the reader to think beyond my narrative and into their own life or other's lives to see how diving deeper into conversation is or is not applied, all while highlighting what I have learned as takeaways. This, as well as my other revisions explained above, have helped me become lost in writing by creating an essay that interacts more with the reader and allows them to be present in my narrative through my thoughts and experiences.

In my first draft, I did not express how the take aways from my conversations with Nick and Jack would shape my thinking and how I will interact with others moving forward. In revising my essay, I had a hard time describing how my takeaway from our conversations would shape my thinking until I experienced this conversation over dinner that I decided to include as an example in my essay. This conversation showed me how much my thinking was shaped based off of how it made it left me feeling. I left this conversation feeling like I wanted to learn more on a deeper level and was more comfortable in engaging in this kind of conversation than I would have been in the beginning of the year. I included this example because it allowed me to better describe how my thinking was shaped.

In realizing that people understand "everything happens for a reason" differently, I wanted to give a few examples of how I apply this saying to my life in school and ROTC. Giving examples added a layer of insight to me as the reader and helped define the importance of this saying in my life. Without knowing examples of where this saying is applied in my life, it is harder to interpret the importance of it. I think that by adding examples, I was able to better include the reader in my narrative.

I added this description of what "everything happens for a reason" means because during workshop I realized people have different understandings of this saying. I order for the context of my paper to be understood, it was important to understand why this saying is important to me and why it was something that I took away from my conversation with Jack and Nick.

Here I decided to add to my description of what it means to me to be lost in conversation. I did this in order to provide context to the reader of how I define being lost in conversation. In my first draft I did not explicitly do this, but after reading this again I realized that different readers may define being lost in conversation differently based on their own experiences. It was important for me to describe how this made me feel so that even if the reader could not connect with my experience of getting lost in conversation, they could empathize with what I felt.

I wanted to end with a question because this is the reality of what I left with after reflecting. It is perfectly acceptable that I was able to lose myself in my writing, yet still have not found an answer. This is something that I have realized throughout this semester and have grown to include the complete progression of my thoughts.

I added more of my thoughts in order to create an inner dialogue. It adds a level of description to express what I am uncertain about instead of neglecting it from my argument. This allows the reader to stay connected to the progression of my thoughts.

I added examples describing how weather is perceived corresponding to different emotions. I made this addition because from a reader's perspective, examples draw in my attention and keep me involved in the narrative of the piece. This is something I wanted to achieve in my writing by adding more descriptive examples. In addition, adding an example helped bridge the gap between the first half of my piece, where the focus is a quote from "Mapping" and the second half, which talks about my feelings during fall. By adding an example, I was able to relate these two ideas more explicitly, which is important in increasing the reader's understanding.

I did not eliminate too much of my writing, but rather. I tried to clean up my use of words. By this I mean taking out words that did not add anything to my statement. One example is I said I was "very involved in music", which expresses the same message of saying I am "involved in music".

I chose to work on this piece further primarily because I remembered enjoying writing it. While I didn't necessarily leave with an answer, it provoked me to question a concept that I find interesting. Further, in reading this piece again, I found that it was lacking the personal description that draws the reader in that I described in my Writer's Statement. I think that in recognizing where in my piece I could improve by allowing myself to become lost in writing, I have shown how I have grown as a writer.

This piece originated from a Canvas discussion post titled "On 'Mapping'", where we were called to reflect on the episode "Mapping" from the podcast This American Life.