Amanda Jones – Edits of Others

1. Alex-

Your paper has a mature tone, and I very much enjoyed it. The one overall issue I came across while reading it was a persistent fluctuation between two major stances about your passion. It seemed to me that with the anecdote in your intro paragraph you were going to center your whole essay around the idea that despite the hardships in college classes, your passion for helping people (which was evidenced by experiences throughout your entire life) was the underlying purpose which would see you through that (and your mom reminded you of this in the anecdote). But in multiple places you seem to question this, especially with the sentence starting “Actually, in consideration of…” I can understand questioning the specific major and occupation, but it felt like you were questioning everything, if that makes sense. I would try and reword some of the contradictory sentences/paragraphs so that you make it more clear that you are confident in this passion, just not sure of the exact direction you want to take.

Sentence: My mother stopped and looked at me thoughtfully, and then told me that, apparently, it had been my dream ever since I was three.

Comments: The way it’s written now, it sounds like a run-on; also, the word “stopped” seemed awkward in that place because your mother wasn’t doing anything in the first place, so how could she stop?

Revision example: My mother waited until I was finished ranting and, in answer, calmly stated that this had been my dream since I was three.

2. Chetna-

An interesting approach to the prompt, and very honest about your feelings when it comes to a specific passion.

I’m not sure that you need an entire paragraph devoted to the definition of “passion,” simply because we care more about what yours is, specifically. I know that you had a hard time coming up with a specific one, but you expounded beautifully once you came to the conclusion that you had a passion for helping people. Perhaps you can cite more specific examples about how you have felt the desire to help others in the past.

There were also a few typos that can be fixed if you just re-read your paper a time or two (especially check the paragraph starting “Every Wednesday…”).

Sentence: Speechless, her words struck me as my mind jolted me back to my own feelings of childhood inadequacy.

Comments: I know what you mean, but the way it is worded makes it sound like her words are speechless; also, it sounds like your mind was in the middle of “jolting” you when her words struck you, when I know you mean that her words struck you and then as a result your mind jolted you.

Revision example: Her words struck me like a slap in the face, and I sat there speechless as my mind jolted me back to similar feelings of inadequacy that I had experienced in my own childhood.

3. Emily-

I was very impressed with your paper! The organization was good, it flowed well. Other than the typos found occasionally (which I’m sure you can catch by just re-reading it), I only had one issue while reading, and that was your disagreement with some of the quotes you use. Granted, this can be an effective and powerful tool in a paper, however you have to be very careful because if not done just right they don’t sound strong at all. It seemed to me that the quotes you argued against could both be taken to mean something different than you made them out to mean (for example, when Houston speaks of education, I had taken it to mean more than just intelligence/knowledge; I thought he meant education to mean something like you’re describing – a kind of mesh of the mind and the soul – since he speaks of it in connection with virtue, rather than without.) Anyway, I would just slightly re-word your arguments there, but the quotes are definitely good to use in relation to your subject.

Sentence: I was only one years old when my brother was potty-trained, but I was determined to learn the concept before he did.

Comments: It sounds like your brother was already potty trained before you had the idea to learn it before him, which would make it impossible (so just slightly change the tense), also, change “years” to “year”

Revision example: I was only one year old when my parents began to potty-train my brother, but I quickly became determined to learn the concept before he did.

4. Garrison-

Your true passion for football and your friends is very evident in your paper. It’s a bit unclear, however, that your overall passion is supposed to be about spending time with your friends; perhaps tweak the first couple paragraphs that go so much into your love of the game itself to focus more on the times spent with teammates, like your last-game example did.

I also noticed a few minor bumps in places that made me stop for a second in an otherwise very smooth essay. The first was in the paragraph starting “I did not come from good athletic stock…” The last three sentences, although they are making a very strong point, become a bit repetitive. If you could shorten them, maybe mesh them together or something, it would make the reading smoother. Also, in the following paragraph, that first sentence (“I am not playing football anymore…”) bothered me because it made it sound like you had a passion for football and you were just giving up on it; since your passion, you’ve found, was actually in spending time with friends out on the field, I would reword the sentence so that it’s more about “re-evaluating” your passionate feelings towards football and finding you can “re-direct” them into other ways you spend time with friends.

Sentence: During the time leading up to my final season, I discovered how hard work pays off; I retained my starting position on the offensive line and was voted most improved player on the varsity offense.

Comments: “During the time leading up to my final season” sounds a bit awkward, so I would simplify it a bit.

Revision example: Despite all the difficulties and competition (you can reword that), by my final season I was being rewarded for all my hard work; I retained…

5. Law-

I love how you begin and end your paper with similar stories that show how you’ve changed; this very much ties together the essay into a more cohesive whole. You stayed well on topic, and there were no spots that seemed very out-of-place or extraneous while I was reading through, so good job on overall content and flow. I did notice quite a few sentences that either had subject-verb disagreement, awkward wording, or could just be made stronger by changing a few words. I’ll just mention one here, but I’ve marked up a copy of your paper in word using the Comment tool, and if you would like a copy of that just let me know.

Sentence: The final obstacle to my self actualization was college.

Comments: The rest of the paragraph talks about expanding your passion to help others in the wider world, which is a common idea related to college, but the way this sentence is worded does not really connect the idea fully (hard for reader to follow, seems disjointed). Also, it sounds like college is a hindrance, rather than a help, which hopefully is not the case!

Example revision: As college approached, I began to question how my recent insights into my passion could transfer into a future career and life-long purpose.

6. Liz-

Although I really enjoyed reading about your different passions for poetry, fashion, etc, I found it difficult to determine exactly which passion/over-arching passion you were trying to focus on. By the last few paragraphs, it did sound like you were trying to reconcile all of them together, but I think it would help the reader if you more clearly stated this in the beginning; for example, by the end it sounded like a key passion of yours was connecting to people, which would explain your love for poetry, design, and politics; if you talked about that in your introduction, as well as connected each hobby back to this theme in each individual paragraph, I think the reader would be able to see the entire paper as a more cohesive whole.

Also, and this is just a small thing, at the end of the second paragraph you mentioned your learning style; even though I agree that this could b every important information, when I was reading through it those sentences just seemed to come out of nowhere, and lead nowhere to me. Perhaps a transition, or relating it a bit more back to your overall passion (love or connection) would help it flow better within the context.

Sentence: Because I have decided against a career in science, Politics is a very direct way for me to influence the world would be to explore a political life.

Comments: It sounds like two sentences were kind of smashed together here.

Example revision: Although I have decided against a career in science, I feel that I can still have a very direct influence with (or “on” or w/e OED says is the right word to use with “influence”) the world by exploring political life.

I really enjoyed it all! I’m inspired to read some more poetry now =)

7. Mauro-

You have a wonderful passion that is certainly much needed in this world! I think your stories about the PALs program and losing/regaining friendships in high school are both very good illustrations, however I had a bit of trouble trying to figure out the purpose of them in the contest just because of some wording issues, etc. So I have a few suggestions that are basically explaining the different places where I had to stop reading in the middle of the paper because I got confused, or what not.

-In your introduction I felt like you were almost trying to get ahead of yourself when listing the two main experiences you were going to talk about in the paper. You started to talk very specifically about the PALs program with the sentence that mentions what period you went to the schools, etc., and in the next sentence you mention a revelation that the reader doesn’t know about because you haven’t talked about what you really learned from the PALs experience yet. All we know is that you learned what it meant to really be a friend…but we have yet to understand what you mean by that. Overall, I would suggest some changes to this paragraph. Specifically, you might want to delete some of the details and start things off more general. (Such as, “A number of very significant experiences during high school would challenge and shape my previous assumptions about friendship, and they would ultimately fuel my passion for helping others/making others happy.”)

-In the second paragraph you say that you were wrong about being given kids through the PALs program who had endless wells of personal problems, which makes the reader assume that these kids were the opposite of having “wells of personal problems,” or basically, that the kids you got turned out to be very self-sufficient/happy/etc. The rest of the paragraph you don’t talk about this, however, but rather go into how they loved seeing you all the time, which seems rather unrelated to the first part of the paragraph. In your intro you mention learning about what it really means to be a friend from these kids, and I think expanding on this idea in the second paragraph would help. For example, after you say that you were wrong about these kids needing someone to solve their problems (a hero), add in a sentence or two saying that what they actually needed was not a hero, but a friend – someone who they could be themselves around, happy or sad; “someone who would not tease them for being clumsy or un-cool.” And then go on to talk about how they waited eagerly for you to come each week, etc…

-In the fourth paragraph you make it sound as if your new insights about making people happy are a bad thing. If you could just re-word/re-structure that paragraph so that it doesn’t sound like smiling at strangers and greeting others are superficial/bad things to do (the whole sentence about “quantity over quality”), it would greatly help me as a reader because being compassionate is not bad, but I understand how trying to please everyone in the world is (which I think is what you were trying to get across). So, rather than saying “quantity vs. quality,” maybe say something more about how you became overzealous in your new-found compassion towards others, stretching yourself too thin and trying to give too much of yourself to pleasing others, to the point where you had insufficient time/energy to devote to the people closest to you.

-Sentence: Indeed, these statements reflected how I had felt less than a year before; having been subject to filling myself with the burdens of others.

Comments: “filling myself with the burdens” sounded a bit awkward; also, the second half of the sentence does not have a subject, so it should probably be separated by a comma rather than a semicolon

Example revision: …less than a year before, having tried to take the burdens of others upon myself.

I know this all looks like a lot, but it’s really just me trying to get across what exactly bothered me when reading. It’s hard to describe. I did enjoy reading the entire thing, and I wish you the best of luck with continuing in your passion!

8. Pallavi-

Good job of sticking to your theme of a passion for helping others. One thing I would suggest, however, is making the transitions between different paragraphs/examples a bit smoother so that they flow together better. It is obvious once you talk about India or biology that they relate to your passion for helping others, but they just seem a little disconnected.

Sentence: Over the years after every subsequent visit I bring back with me a different lesson, different experiences, and a different outlook on life.

Comments: It seems a bit repetitive to say both ¿over the years¿ and ¿after every subsequent visit,¿ so I would delete one of them; also, I think the verb tense should change from ¿I bring¿ to ¿I have brought.¿

Example revision: After every subsequent visit I have brought back with me a different lesson, different experiences, and a different outlook on life. (Nice anaphora, by the way, or whatever the correct literary device is)

9. Trevor-

I really enjoyed reading this paper; it definitely spoke from the heart! I had a few issues with organization and some repetitiveness, though.

Firstly, the paragraph beginning “The confrontation with my parents…” seemed disjointed to me; the first sentence focuses on your parents, but then the rest of the paragraph focuses on your cousin; I would either delete the first sentence entirely, or separate the paragraph into one about what led your parents to suspect the truth in the previous weeks (or months), and one about Stephanie (if they are sufficiently different).

Second, I felt that the paragraph beginning “One of the most pressing issues…” had a repetitive feel towards the end (last two sentences, specifically, seemed to say the same thing), as well as the starting sentence of the next paragraph.

Third, in the paragraph starting “It is the fear of not being accepted…” the information about parents and loss was very important, but I felt like it was almost in the wrong place; I was thinking that it would fit better in the next paragraph, following the first sentence “The unfortunate truth is that…” because the information seems to explain this topic sentence very well. The rest of that paragraph could probably be separated into it’s own paragraph if you decided to do that.

Lastly, I thought your paper gave very good background into why you are passionate about homosexual issues, but I felt that it didn’t go into how you planned to act on this passion in order to accomplish your goal of making the world safer and freer for homosexuals (now that I think about it, the sentence where you say this might should go towards the end of your paper in order to make the conclusion stronger). Are there organizations you have joined or plan on joining, or specific actions you plan on taking? If not, that’s ok (few of us no exactly what we’re planning to do with our passions at this point), but I don’t think it would hurt to mention it, even if you don’t know; but will this affect your career/major/activities?

Sentence revision:

Yours: “Why?” I thought, “I should have jumped up on the chair and yelled it but in spite of the entire world being against me.”

Comments: The tense is awkward here with “I thought” and then “I should have.” Also, I don’t think the whole phrase starting “I should have…” needs to be in quotes; I would associate the “I thought” with “Why?” and make “I should have…” it’s own sentence. Also, at this point saying the entire world is against you seems a bit dramatic since you’re focusing on your parents’ reactions (which, granted, is still incredibly stressful), so I would rephrase that part.

Revision example: “Why?” I thought. I should have jumped up on the chair and proudly proclaimed the truth to my parents in spite of my fear of the repercussions it would undoubtedly incur.*

*Note: this would change the quotations in the following sentence, as well