Many of the greatest meals I’ve shared with my family have been associated with buttered noodles.
I chose to add this piece of information so that the reader could better understand what made buttered noodles so great for me. Without this paragraph the reader may just think that I have an unhealthy obsession with buttered noodles.
The tangled mess of carbohydrates had become a staple in my diet.
Here I worked to create a description that would paint a picture in my reader's head through concrete details. I wanted to change up the way I described buttered noodles so that it did not seem as repetitive for the reader.
Don’t worry–I still pick buttered noodles as my birthday meal!
I added conversational snippets to make the one-pager feel more personal. I hoped that by doing so I would be able to make the essay sound less academic and make it more interesting overall.
All jokes aside, I now understand that what I really loved was not the carb-filled meal. Rather, instead, the moments and people that surrounded it.
Since my first free write did not include a conclusion, I decided to add one to have more closure. I wanted to think about what made pasta so special for me so that the reader could better understand my obsession with it.
On the first day of high school, my orientation group sat in a circle to respond to ice breaker questions.
This piece originated from a free write early from early in the semester. I remember sitting in class craving buttered noodles for lunch. I wrote about how I was most excited to go home to share a meal of buttered noodles with my family. After rereading my free write, I thought it would be fun to expand on my love for buttered noodles for my portfolio essay. I also wanted to challenge myself to think about buttered noodles and the deeper meaning behind my love for their taste.
As a generation, we need to work together to redefine gender norms and rid ourselves of these strict and damaging traditional gender stereotypes.
I also heavily revised my conclusion. My first draft's conclusion did not effectively conclude my paper. After rereading my first draft, it appeared rushed and was hard to follow. So naturally, when revising my Inquiry, I decided that my conclusion would need a complete rewrite. I wanted to try one of the concluding techniques that we discussed in class. I used the "zoom out/big idea" because it is often effective in making the readers think about the topics presented in the essay. I wanted to target my audience (college students) directly by showing how they can be part of the solution.
Across the globe, boys grow up with the idea that strength and dominance are measures of masculinity and that expressing emotions is a sign of weakness. In a New York Post article discussing men and violence, author and criminal lawyer Jarryd Bartle explores why men may be more prone to violence than women. He argues that when boys are conditioned to believe they must identify solely with masculine qualities, then they will grow up with a limited and narrow view of what it means to be male. He proposes that “because of their (men’s) limited view of masculinity, [they] are far more likely to act violently” (Bartle). Furthermore, when men feel like they must suppress their emotions in order to remain masculine, they often will develop an unhealthy relationship with their feelings (Bartle). With these societal standards in mind, I can better understand why my brother may feel the need to express his emotion through anger.
In my first draft, this paragraph lacked the four-step discursive process. After my Inquiry Conference, I agreed that using the process would be in my best interest to make my writing easier to follow. By introducing, quoting, citing, and analyzing, I was able to organize my thoughts more clearly. My first draft did not analyze the quote in a personal way; however, I think that relating the quote to my own life experiences made the essay more enjoyable for my reader.
However, biology is not alone at fault for male aggression.
I focused on revising my transition sentences during my revision process to make the Inquiry flow better overall. In this case, I worked on stringing together ideas from the last paragraph to the new ideas that I would discuss in the current paragraph. I think that this sentence is an example of an effective transition in my Inquiry. Transitions like these I think made my Inquiry more clear overall.
On my confirmation retreat in eleventh grade, we played a game called “cross the line.”
I rewrote my introduction entirely. My first introduction lacked a personal aspect and was, in all honesty, not engaging for the reader in the slightest. Further, during the Inquiry Writer's Workshop, I realized that many of the "memorable moments" were about solid introductions. Of which many incorporated a personal anecdote. I found the introductions that I read for class much more interesting than my own. So when I went back to make revisions, I made sure to tackle my introduction first by adding a personal aspect to engage the reader.