Revision

I really hate when I get a paper back (from any assignment) only to read it and find a million things that aren’t the way I intended them to be. Sure, there will always be something that I miss or that I could correct, but to have totally just gotten it wrong because I refused to go over it is a little silly. Without fail, if I haven’t spent some time going through a paper after I’ve written it, it will not have the message or clarity that I want it to have. I’ve seen this going back though some of these entries. Some of them are rather unclear and unfocused, though that may be due to the nature of the style in which they are written.

Journals by nature, to me, are not always thought through and complete. Especially when they are half written during classes and then typed up later (and in theory wrapped up then as well). Now, I’m not admitting to and such debauchery going on for these entries, but something is causing them to be less than ideal.

Back to the point of this entry though! For all of those times that I’ve gotten a paper back on to wish I could revise it, there must be a way to really cement in my head how beneficial that revision is. My first taste of really knowing that came last semester in my advanced comp class, when I would go through turning in multiple drafts to my professor. I started thinking then about how I could incorporate such things into my own classroom.

The most creative idea I’ve come up with yet is having students bring their last paper in within the first week of class to be re-worked and revised. Hopefully seeing the difference in the quality of the pieces is enough to motivate them to find the time for an early draft and revision on the rest of their papers through the semester.