Critiques of P2A

By Mary Dauterman

1. Brad- Your paper is very conversational, which is good. I feel like you are directly talking to the reader through your paper. The paper as a whole flows really well. I admire your passion for music and it was great to be able to listen to exactly what you were talking about, when you were talking about it. I liked how you used this paper as an example of your ¿pilgrimage¿ through life¿how you became interested in music and how that eventually lead you to Austin. Suggestions: you might want to add captions to your pictures. Though they pictures themselves are pretty self-explanatory, I¿d still like to see them labeled. I had trouble finding a sentence to revise, but the following two both end in the word ¿do¿ which bugs me for some reason:

Yours: ¿sitting in that counselor¿s office, I realized what I feel compelled to do. I have to somehow be involved in music, and nothing else will do.

Revised: ¿sitting in that counselor¿s office, I realized what I feel compelled to do: I have to somehow be involved in music. Nothing else will do.

P.S. you should definitely consider DJing for UT college radio. The application is here: http://www.kvrx.org/. I¿d totally listen to the Brad Show!

2. Pallavi- I really enjoyed your paper and agreed with your main point at the end¿that what¿s really important is the good we have done with our lives. You posed several questions at the beginning of your paper and I think you had answered them clearly by the end of your paper. Your paper was a good combination of everything/all your experiences that have lead to your passion and showing this really helped define who you are. You are already involved in so many things that relate back to your passion! I noticed that you didn¿t have captions on your pictures, so you might want to do that. I revised the following sentence slightly:

Yours: Rather than counting the number of awards and honors we receive throughout our life time, we should count the number of lives we touch to evaluate the success in our life.

Revised: Rather than counting the number of awards and honors received throughout our lifetimes, we should count the number of lives we touch to evaluate our life¿s success.

3. Boomer/Mauro- At first I thought it would be hard to define your passion as being a good friend, but you did a great job. This paper really tells us about you as a person, you personal journey and realizations along the way. It¿s very admirable that you were involved with the PAL mentoring program. I was very interested in your ¿grand realization¿¿that experiences the same emotions, just in different ways (children vs. adults). Your sentences are well structured and every one of them is important in your paper; there were no ¿throw away¿ sentences or anything irrelevant. Your paragraph on the Myers-Briggs test is interesting and important, but I feel you need to integrate it a little better, with a lead-in sentence and a lead-out sentence. This sentence is really not that bad, I¿ve just re-worded it and punctuated differently:

Yours: now that I want to work towards a career in which I can do just that, however, there are such a wide variety of possibilities seeing as how my vision is vague and encompasses a broad range of things.

Revised: now I want to work towards a career in which I can do just that; however, there are limitless possibilities because my vision is broad and all-encompassing.

4. Prinka- Your passion is clearly defined and I immediately knew what you were going to write about when I saw the picture of your cleats. I really liked your emotional introduction; it really pulls the reader in. Your paper went beyond a love of soccer—you related it to teamwork, friendship, determination, ect. I think you should work on the section about “feeling fast.” It’s a little repetitive. Though I like the look of the short sentences, I think you could break up some sentences before that:

Yours: I don’t hear the crowd and I don’t think; I just do. I fall into a trance where the loudest noise is my own breathing and I just play.

Revised: I don’t hear the crowd. I don’t think. I just do. I fall into a trace where the loudest noise is my own breathing. I just play.

Then you could go back and make the “fast” section more fluid.

5. Rachel- Your use of photos and your interpretations of them is very interesting and different. I also think you went in a new/creative direction by labeling your passion as a search for emotions. You also had good mix of personal experiences and current events to back up your point. I especially liked your reference to the Gururumba culture and how you tied it into your title—how perfect! You have a clear flow from subject to subject, but you might want to try to vary your sentence length. You might consider eliminating the use of “one” as your pronoun to make your paper more personal. Most of yours are pretty long. I tried to revise this sentence to make it a little shorter and more straightforward:

Yours: If one is walking down the street and is struck by the sudden urge to laugh for no apparent reason, other passersby will surely assume the laughing person is unbalanced or insane.

Revised: If walking down the street struck by the sudden urge to laugh for no apparent reason, other passersby will surely assume you are unbalanced or insane.

6. Garrison- It’s great that you used football as a backdrop for your paper and found what was truly important about that experience: building friendships. You also went further by explaining how your senior year ended up shaping who you are today. So far so good, maybe just work on your quote integrations.

These sentences were a little repetitive. If you break up the quote, it might fit into this section a little better:

Yours: I lived for Friday nights; Rosacker Field became my sanctuary, my sacred space. “A sacred space manifests a spiritual vision,” says Professor Jerome Bump. My sacred space was the football field, and my vision occurred under the lights every Friday night.

Revised: I lived for Friday nights; Rosacker Field became my sanctuary, my “sacred space” that “manifest[ed] a spiritual vision,” (Bump). So my sacred space was the football field, and my vision occurred under the lights every Friday night.

7. Liz-You obviously have a lot of passions and that’s great. Early on, you tell us all of these passions are linked by love. To add more cohesiveness to your paper, try to make this connection with an introduction and concluding sentence in every section (“bookend” everything within this same idea). Also, you mention poetry, beauty, and servitude in your introduction, but not fashion, design, or politics. It would be good if you could work all of that in. Slight sentence revision:

Yours: The knowledge that you have created something beautiful, or that you have seen that beauty, is amazing

Revised: Knowing that you have created something beautiful, that you have seen beauty, is amazing.

8. Chetna- Your writing is clear and I can definitely hear your voice in this paper. Though you originally found yourself “passionless,” you clearly proved yourself wrong. Your use of personal experiences serves as a framework to shape what your passions have become: helping others and bettering the world.

Yours: Or maybe, my maturity has not reached a point at which I am ready to embrace and pursue my passion.

(I’m not sure you need that comma since the introductory phrase is so short)

Revised: Or maybe my maturity has not reached a point at which I am ready to embrace and pursue my passion.

Also, you must have missed this when you proofread your paper (there are extra words in the sentence)

Yours: When I asked Jacquiesce where she wanted to put her picture, she glanced at it and quickly turned her slammed her photo facedown on the table.

Revised: When I asked Jacquiesce where she wanted to put her picture, she glanced at it and quickly slammed her photo facedown on the table.

9. Law- Well done introduction; it grips the reader and your second paragraph links this experience to your passion/self-discovery. You clearly flow from experience/realization to the next experience/realization and do a great job of reminding the reader what your point is. Your paper clearly shows your pilgrimage from a scared, dependant little kid to an independent adult. Well done.

I think you could make this more concise by combining sentences:

Yours: The discovery learning that I experienced in Doctor Clifford's class introduced me to the concepts of self-actualization and independence. In effect, it was then that I made the transition from being dependent on others to realizing that I was ultimately responsible for myself

Revision: The discovery learning that I experienced in Doctor Clifford's class introduced me to the concepts of self-actualization and independence; it was then that I made the transition from dependency on others to realizing I was ultimately responsible for myself.

This sentence is a bit wordy:

Yours: Ultimately, the profession also fits well with the idea of allowing a person to fully manifest their potential.

Revision: Ultimately, the profession embodies the idea of allowing a person to fully manifest their potential.