When revising this part of my essay, I knew I still wanted to talk about her time at the FE college, because it seemed like a pivotal moment. This quote focused on the ideas she was introduced to while at the college. It was easier for me to state my impression of the text with this quote, as it shows an instance that impacted her directly. For comparison, my quote from the first draft, while not a bad choice, didn't connect to Finlayson or her experience much. This left me to analyze word choice and repetition, which was too "schoolish," in hindsight.

In my first draft, I included many connections to myself and my own life, and with them I thought I was showing the reader the impressions the text made on me. While they might not have been completely pointless comments, I thought that those connections were the how/why. They were not. During the revision process, I limited myself when making connections, as to not fall into the same habit as before. In this example specifically, I still connected Finlayson's ideas to my own life, but kept the focus mostly on her ideas. I didn't bring up completely new stories or examples like I had in my first draft.

I remember feeling proud of this analysis, because I had finally been able to put the how/why part of the triangle into words. In the first draft of this essay, I think I was getting there, but I failed to specifically state how it made me feel. With this paragraph, I changed directions completely and used a quote from a whole different section. In the past when doing revision, I felt too connected to my previous work and never made significant changes. In order to break myself from that habit when editing this essay, I looked at a different area of Finlayson's essay to practice the skill of determining how or why a stimulus made me feel a certain way. Through that exercise I forced myself into, I came up with this response which is much stronger in comparison to my first draft.

The most obvious change that occurred between my first draft and this one, was that I completely changed my focus. As I mentioned in my writer's statement, my first draft was too analytical. I first focused on how Finlayson was attempting to highlight the faults in the school system so readers could view it in a new light. However, in this draft, I focused more on the question that I was interested in answering after reading her essay. This change also helped me choose quotes that stuck out to me, not quotes that simply backed up the claim I was trying to make.

I wasn't sure how to conclude this piece, so I re-read my two freewrites, hoping to get inspiration. These two sentences came directly from my first freewrite, and I thought it was the perfect way to wrap up my ideas, and drive home the point I was making. The idea for this revised piece came mostly from the first freewrite, about losing and finding yourself. While I could have just revised that, the connections I made to other freewrites, articles, and specific experiences helped bring this piece to life.

When I was re-reading my second freewrite, I saw these two questions I had quickly jotted down at the bottom corner of the page. While these should have had no inherent meaning, other than questions for me to look up later, I thought that it was very authentic and worthy of including. I was very satisfied with this part because it begins to show a real example of how easy it is for me to get lost in my own thoughts.

This part came directly from the first freewrite back in August. I wrote this in response to the prompt about losing and finding yourself, but I liked it enough that I decided to keep it, almost word for word. I thought while my focus of this revised piece expanded beyond just losing and finding yourself, this was still a true statement about me that relates well to the topic of the paragraph it's in.

This first paragraph is a completely new idea that I have never written about before. When deciding what I wanted to revise, I came across two freewrites (one from 8/30 and the other from 10/18) that had similar topics related to getting lost in thought. I decided to combine and expand upon the ideas from both freewrites, as I thought I could create a much stronger piece than either would have been by itself. Additionally, this prompt from graphic design came to mind as a perfect way to introduce the main topic.