The World Is Flat
Unlike my first English 1A essay, my second essay on Thomas Friedman's The World Is Flat involved seperate research. The purpose of the assignment however was the same, to relate
Friedman's ideas about a new globalized world to my own life and how they affect me. The thesis of my paper was that information technology was changing how people communicate, share ideas, and also allowed me to work as a web-developer. The main focus of the book and my essay was how the global economic playing field is being leveled by and I used my work as a web-developer as proof since it would not be possible for me to work without the advent of information technology and the internet. In this paper I was able to describe my own personal story much more effectively than in my first essay on Catfish and Mandala and because of that I was able to receive an A on my first submission. With that progress noted, I still needed to improve on the quality of my introduction, whereas my intro was weak in Catfish and Mandala, it was nearly non-existant in this paper.
I have posted my first submitted essay as well as a rewrite where I use what I learned later in the quarter to improve my introduction. If you look at the essays side-by-side you can see the obvious difference in quality. I decided to open my second paper with a quote that relates to my thesis, rather than just going straight into my thesis as I had done in my first major paper. I also was able to further improve upon my personal story by elaborating and explaining more about my personal opinions regarding technology. Just like in my first essay re-write I was able to greatly refine my writing and learn from my professor's comments. While Dr. Lankford wrote on my original that I had no real intro, in my second copy he commented that my intro had significantly improved. I view this essay as my strongest in the quarter no doubt because I spent the most time writing and trying to refine it. It is in this essay that I apply the lessons I learned from my paper on Catfish and Mandala as well as step up my work ethic.
