Below is the final draft of this paper. Professor Van Kley’s comments are included in the margins and as a final commentary at the end.
Below is the post-mortem reflecting on the ideas and skills I have gained throughout this project.
Post-mortem
For Project 1, the writing concepts I found most useful during the project was the idea of planning an outline and organization of concepts that Professor Van Kley helped me with during conferences. I found that because all of my ideas were already presented in the paper, I just needed to plan a better road map of how each idea linked to the next concept. A useful process was when Professor Van Kley helped me with creating clear sentences that transitioned to the next quote or idea. In addition, I found the “Style” book to be very effective in reminding me to simplify my sentences and structure. It stated that oftentimes, sentences are complicated because the writer is unclear as to what she is articulating. This helped me tremendously in my writing by reminding me to eliminate any “fluff” sentences I included and to be able to identify a clear and concise subject/verb. Specifically, I also found it helpful to use the “motive” formula with a starting position. This is because for this project, I was often summarizing and synthesizing other critics’ ideas and it is necessary to know ahead of time what my starting position is so that the essay can have direction.