While revising this piece, I also learned to sit back and think about what I was writing about. In the past, I have always gone about writing essays the wrong way. I would always wait to near the end of the deadline to even start. This lead me to have jumbled up thoughts and some of my writing would not make sense because I was focusing too much on trying to reach the page limit. But by doing and revising this assignment, I learned that taking my time on a paper will lead to more coherent writing and I will have better thoughts in general. By doing this, I was able to do what the assignment said correctly and go "down the rabbit hole." By taking my time, I was able to let my thoughts wander at their own pace and ultimately think deeper about the subject than I thought I would in the first place, which lead to smooth transitions between thoughts and more clear writing overall.

At the beginning of the semester, I had a hard time letting my thoughts flow in my writing. I would have one idea after another, but ultimately, they would not be connected in a fluid manner. By completing and revising this assignment, I was able to learn how to let my thoughts flow from one to the next and for that to lead to having smoother and more thoughtful writing in the future. In this assignment, I used techniques that we have learned in class to make my thoughts cleanly flow from one to to the other, which also gave me a better understanding of what I was writing about.

I feel like I could have done a better job explaining the lighting of Conte here and how it relates to the boxes. The boxes are set up in such a way so that they overlook both Conte Forum and Alumni Stadium on opposite sides of the boxes. When it becomes night time and the sun sets, the staff turns off the lights in Conte, and the view of Alumni becomes dark as well, because they do not turn on the field lights. The only source of light at this point is from the light bulbs within the boxes themselves. Looking back, I could have described how the lighting in this situation affected how people studied, and what kind of atmosphere it created while I was there.

Looking back on these paragraphs, I never had any main idea here. I am still working on how to tie background ideas in with my actual main idea of my essay. Even though I did a good job at describing the way the boxes are set up and how they are exact mirrors of each other, I never fully described how this ties in to the meditation essay itself. I was trying to explain how the boxes are very exclusive and that not many people know they even exist in the first place. Even though I did a good job describing how they are exclusive, I did not add any personal experiences on how I have had to get there in the past. When the box doors are locked at night time, I have had to climb in and unlock the door from the inside. If I were to put an example like this in the essay, I think it would have given the reader a better idea on how complicated it would be to get to this place to study, and they would appreciate it more if they went and tried to go study there for themselves.

While first writing the meditation on place essay, I had a hard time writing myself into the paper. I did not know whether to add a lot or a little of my own experiences into the paper. In my rough draft, I had a hard time deciding whether to add myself in, or just describe the place from a third person perspective. Ultimately, for my final draft, I decided to fully immerse myself into the essay. I decided to use my ideas, thoughts, and experiences in Conte to give the reader a better understanding of what it is actually like to be there when nobody else is. While writing my final draft, I realized how much more powerful adding in my experiences to the essay would be. It would have meaning to me, instead of just a mess of words describing a place with no attachment to it at all.

While writing about the sights and sounds that one would experience in Conte late at night when no one is there, I learned how to pay close attention to detail and ultimately better describe the setting in general. When I wrote my rough draft, I had maybe one or two sentences dealing with this section on the sounds of players playing hockey on the ice late at night. After I wrote it, I wanted to get a better understanding on the detail of what I was writing about to give the reader a better grasp on what I was trying to explain. By going to Conte again late at night to experience this, I used the techniques we learned in class to pay closer attention to detail to have further commentary in my essay and I was able to do just that in the final draft.

While I was writing the introduction for my meditation on place essay, describing Conte Forum was arguably the part where I struggled most. I found it hard to describe exactly what I saw through words in an essay. I was trying to depict Conte when it was its loudest so I could then set myself up for the rest of the essay which would describe Conte as a quiet place to study, contrary to popular belief. While I was writing this, I fund it hard to pick exactly which words would spark interest in the sights and sounds of Conte when it is at its loudest. Over the course of FWS, I have learned to get a better understanding of how to soak in everything that is going on around me and to pay close attention to detail. By doing that, in my final draft, I think I was able to describe my experiences more accurately and give the reader a better understanding on what it is like to be in Conte when it is at its loudest.

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