P4A SWORD reviews + back-reviews

FOCUS

1.) From what I can tell, your thesis statement is " I have found my original vision of the world around me has led me to develop a passion for creativity and a desire to share my world view in an artistic way." THe first thing that I think can help your paper is to clarify this thesis statement. Adam''s handouts tell us to "don''t write something you wouldn''t say, but don''t write anything you would say," which sound confusing, but really just means this sentence sounds very falsely academic - it''s not something you''d ever say in reality. Instead, why not clarify it to be "My experiences with the world have led me to develop a passion for creativity and a desire to express my world view in an artistic way." Then, I''d restructure your paragraph a bit to fit this thesis better, because your whole paragraph is talking about choices and bettering the world, and then you just start talking about your passion. I''m not quite sure how you''re trying to connect these things, so maybe a sentence or two to make it more clear would help.

In the 3rd paragraph, the one about Gaudi, you list all these traits that he embodied, but you could connect more to why he inspires you personally or to how he positively impacted the world through his art to make the paragraph refer back to the thesis more - this would be better than just the sentence at the end that you have about hoping to find a way to do what Gaudi did.

You did a great job of keeping each paragraph about one thing, except for paragraph 5. 5 is more of a discussion of virtue and compassion and lots of things, so I think this is okay and works in the context of the paper. Your conclusion connects perfectly back to your introduction and thesis, so nice work! I gave you a 7, because though your thesis was worded a little strangely, I still understood what you meant, and every paragraph really connected back to it (especially the conclusion).

This review was helpful because I really did need to go back and clarify/solidify my ideas. The advice on restructuring my paragraphs was also helpful.

2.) The focus of the paper is very clear. They are trying to achieve a level of "heroism" through the cultivation of their creativity, compassion for mankind, and the determination to make a positive impact on society. Relevant examples that were drawn from sources like Ram Dass and Chokyi Rinpoche aide the author in expressing their points.

Difficulty in determining the focus of the paper was found in the lack of clearer and shorter topic sentences in each paragraph. In the paragraph beginning with "I currently struggle in finding how to leave my legacy behind. I want to have a positive impact on society, but how can I achieve this through art?," the topic sentence could be made much clearer if "I want to have a positive..." was moved in front of "I currently struggle..."

There is not a ton of advice here, but I did apply it to my paper (especially what was said in the 2nd paragraph)

3.) 1. The focus on the paper was obviously about how to unite a passion for art with helping others and impacting the world. The thesis was clearly stated in the first paragraph. Your vision has led you to a “passion for creativity and a desire to share your world in an artistic way.” I think you did a good job of conveying your passion for art, through your examples with Gaudi as a role model, however, I think you can work on where the “helping” other people comes in. In the first paragraph (the introduction) you hardly introduce your topic. I don’t know if that large quote in the intro helps. (I feel you only say where you’re going in the last sentence of the 2nd paragraph). Other than that, The whole commentary about good and evil and humans having to choose between the two dominates your introduction. I feel it shouldn’t be that way. You have great analysis about good and evil that plagues our society, and I think you should use that paragraph to show how you’ve chosen to do good and that is why you are on a quest to integrate art with helping others.

Also, I think your discussion of Gaudi’s work is good, but it should not focus on Gaudi. Instead, relate that to your definition of a hero or a role model (using Campbell’s standards) and show how that affects you. I know you did this in two separate paragraphs, but try integrating the two so that the focus is not on Gaudi’s achievements but rather how you are impacted by Gaudi’s work. How about show that Gaudi’s goal was to make a difference on others, and then you can say that Gaudi impacted you? It is his legacy that caused you to admire him, what is your goal, your legacy? I think you’re getting at the idea that you want to follow in Gaudi footsteps and pave a path to help others. You should mention that in your paper.

Also, you briefly mention this idea of “communicating meaning” in the world. What does this mean? Why is developing the self important and how does your passion for art help in that? Tie your love for art in with your method of reaching others. I’ll try to go paragraph by paragraph to be more specific:

2nd P- “A hero’s most important task is to better…” where do you go with this sentence? You talk about heroes but then all of the sudden give your thesis. How about moving the talk about heroes to the place above Gaudi.|

3rd P- expand on the last sentence “I hope to find a way to turn my passion to create (what??) in to the ability to communicate meaning (what meaning? Why?) and better the world (in what ways?).

5th P- “I think the first step is to find faith in mankind…” what does this mean? Find faith in mankind versus a nonexistent faith? Explain this more

5th P- “After finding faith and intrinsically bettering myself…” explain why it is important to express compassion.. this idea of compassion seems to come out of nowhere.

5th P- “obvious: it we are to take a little from those we interact with, we must give a little back” I understand what you are talking about but it is still a bit unclear. Why does this give/take relationship exist?

7th P- explain what print media is and how it relates to helping others

I give you a 6-7.

Extremely detailed and helpful. I followed almost all of what was advised and tried to make my paper more personal.

4.) Your thesis is "I have found my original vision of the world around me has led me to develop a passion for creativity and a desire to share my world view in an artistic way." This implies that we will find out (a) what your original vision of the world is, (b) how your passion for creativity manifests itself, and (c) how you intend to share your world view in an artistic way. I''m not sure we find out what (a) is, since you quickly divert the reader to the discussion of Gaudi. You touch on (b) in the Gaudi discussion, obliquely, and (c) when you reach the paragraph beginning "My life could take many roads," but this paragraph is brief. So, looking at the paper as a whole, you haven''t really supported your thesis. I''ll come back to what I do think your argument is in the "organization" section.

I think you might having problems with focus here because you feel you don''t really have an answer to the prompt. My advice here would be not to worry so much about the prompt and just tell us more about how you might use your artistic vision to lead and inspire others. You can be hypothetical if you wish. You can still use Gaudi, but turn him back toward you--how did he inspire you, and how will you inspire others in the same way?

This person wanted me to be more specific about my leadership goals, so I added some more specifics in the later half of my paper.

5.) Thesis:

This is the sentence I found to contain your thesis for the paper: “In order to be a leader, we must find our heroes within, cultivate these features of ourselves, and accept the challenge of bettering the world.” What I took this to suggest is that you were giving your vision to how you would become a leader by becoming using your heroic qualities to better the world. I think you could have made this statement a bit clearer and more concise, but it communicated your point effectively.

Focus of the Paper:

While at first it seems unrelated to the topic, you relate the individual’s choice between good and evil into the topic with this sentence: “…we can become closer to our ultimate potentials, closer to hero-dom.” Overall, this section represents the thesis topic and fits within the focus of the paper, but you might try to reorganize the order of thoughts so the reader is aware of this relationship between becoming a hero and an individual’s potential for good from the start. I will comment more on this in the organization section.

The thoughts on Guadi and his faith and spirituality are only indirectly associated with the focus. You fail to make a connecting statement that brings this directly into the scope of the paper. Instead, the reader is left to have to pull together the abstract connection between Guadi’s religion and how you plan to become a hero. You should begin by making a statement such as, “Gaudi’s faith, which is apparent through his work, is essential to his particular form of heroism.” Or “His strong connection with religion and nature serve to enlighten people and better the world around him.” Anything that the reader can identify as a restatement of the thesis connected to the specific idea that Gaudi uses his spirituality to become a leader and a hero will strengthen these sections.

Again, try to more clearly associate compassion with your vision. The first sentence of this section—“I can further improve my connections with others by becoming a more compassionate being”—would better serve this purpose as “Compassion is essential to becoming both a leader and fining your inner-hero.”

When you go through your paper, keep your thesis in mind and think to yourself, “does this directly connect to my thesis?” Doing this and making sure there is a clear stated connection would greatly improve your paper.

Also, the last paragraph needs some sort of restatement of the thesis. You do not mention heroism or the need to be a leader. You do mention bettering the world, but I still think this idea needs to be expanded.

This person wanted me to link my compassion ideas directly to my thesis and the beginning of my paper. I went back and did that, and this helped me unify the entire essay.

ORGANIZATION

1.) Since your third paragraph is all about Gaudi, why not introduce Gaudi in the topic sentence?

ARound your 5th paragraph, the paper seems a little out of joint. So far you''ve talked about things like your actions determining whether you are good or evil, your need to be creative and your need to make the world a better place through creativity, and Gaudi as your inspiration because of his faith. In your 5th paragraph, you go to a discussion of faith, imagination, compassion, connection, virtue, selflessness, unity, egos, and enlightenment. All of this is awesome writing, and your arguments follow a logical path, but then after this paragraph you jump back into why you need to create art to find happiness in your life. Especially with your Silverman quote at the end of paragraph 6, I feel like this paragraph could come before your discussion of Gaudi. Then you could connect this compassion to being able to connect with people and having faith, and use your 5th paragraph and Gaudi there. Then, you could connect Gaudi''s abillity to connect with people to print media as the most powerful tool to reach out to people, but also a challenging art form that requires an understanding of your audience. This could keep the theme/thesis of your paper that each paragraph should refer to connecting to others.

I think your concluding paragraph is excellent, it follows your last paragraph well, connects back to all of your main points. I think the only thing you could do to improve it is to incorporate your passion to create more, but even then I don''t think it''s that necessary; I ilke it as it is. I gave this a 5 because I think your organization was the weakest part of your paper - you could definitely work on connecting paragraphs back to front and putting them in a logical order. Sometimes, it just takes stepping back and looking at what you said in each paragraph and rearranging after you''re done. However, your arrangement did work logically and did have some good transition.

This was very helpful. By moving the Gaudi paragraphs, my organization became much more logical.

2.) The paper is organized in a way where the audience is first exposed to the points that the writer would like to work upon. The introductory paragraph achieves this. However, the reader must look harder than needed to discern what the points are. The author''s intentions should be more solidified in the introduction.

The paragraphs are on target with the subject, relating back to the author and expressing wants that the audience understands. The only difficulty in the organization is in the actual physical structure of the paper. Spacing the paper out with clean indentations and pictures can help the organization.

I redid my introduction to make my emphasis more clear.

3.) 2. The organization of the paper was good, overall. I felt you established your passion and your role model before you started talking about your vision for the future. However, you might have spent too much time on the passion and the hero portion and not enough talking about the vision. Remember that this essay is a continuation, if you will, of both P2 and P3, so there isn’t really a need to go through much detail to reexplain your passion and Gaudi.

I was hoping to hear more about what YOU plan to do. Yes, Gaudi was amazing, but are you planning on emulating Gaudi, or doing your own thing? What is your own thing? Print media? But how? How does your education at UT help you with this passion for art and desire to help others? Also, I’ve said this already, but I think you need to clearly state the link between your passion for art and your passion for compassion in changing the world. Is it innate? Make use of the first few paragraphs to state your passion and state that you want to help people and then move on to your vision.

I give you a 6.

I tried to add more about my leadership vision at the beginning of the paper. I also added more specifics towards the end of my paper.

4.) o outline the argument you do draw, let me go paragraph by paragraph.

To be a leader, we must be a hero, so we must be good and not evil. To do/be good, we must identify our passions--and mine is sharing my artistic vision with the world. Like Gaudi, I want to see art and nature as one. And like Gaudi, I want to have faith and be selfless. To accomplish this, I must create art in a way that I can communicate with others. I might do this in any number of ways. And in doing so, I''d like to devote my life to spreading my message.

Do you see any redundancy here? Or any wandering off the path set forth by your thesis? I see a pretty big detour in the discussion of faith (which is incidentally one of the longer paragraphs). Is there any way to integrate faith into the central thesis? I''m not sure, but since it seems a central component of your argument, it might be worth a shot. Also, I think you say you want to communicate your vision with others a number of time, without really explaining how (even though you have the seed of this discussion when you talk about print media).

Once you''ve fleshed out your thesis some more, you''ll be able to craft a stronger argument based on it. Remember to ask yourself often, "How am I further defining my vision, here? What am I creating? What am I communicating?" Craft strong topic sentences that signpost for the reader where your argument has come from and where it is going. Remember that each piece of your puzzle must connect to those around it.

I did go back and rethink my thesis, trying to link everything back together.

5.) had a few issues with your division of paragraphs. I feel that there are needed paragraph breaks between thoughts and sections of your paper that are currently grouped into discontinuous paragraphs. Your first body paragraph begins with the struggle of the individual’s choice between good and evil but then moves to the separate topic of leaving behind an impression and changing the world. I feel there is a clear break here which needs to be separated into separate paragraphs. The break in continuity occurs with the sentence, “A hero’s most important task…” Simply break the paragraph here.

Make the paragraphs individually shorter and more concise. Shorter paragraphs with a clear message and subtle transitions between them make for a much more effective read than long paragraphs that tend to ramble.

Your introductory paragraph needs to be more defined to that purpose. It should introduce the topic and state a thesis. It should not get too deep into the matter, simply introduce. Yours starts talking about good and evil. That subject, as well as the Steinbeck quote would do better in the first paragraph. Make your into simply about your vision of bettering the world through your artistic goals.

Good specific advice. I broke up my paragraphs and tried to make sure I wasn''''t being too repetitive. I also added more to my intro.

FLOW

1.) he first thing I see in your paper is that the style of your language is soemtimes awkward and off-putting. I think you''re writing in a very academic tone, with sentences such as "Thus it is the way we live our lives, the choices we make, the selfish desires we either pursue or repress, that lead us to be stamped with the label of "good" or "evil"." This sentence is really convoluted as well, and it just makes it hard to understand your point. It''s possible to write clear prose without sounding informal, so I''d try to go back through all your sentences and saying them out loud. This really helps me to figure out which sentences are really weird (because I have this problem too) and then I just keep rewording them out loud until I find something that sounds natural and will improve your flow.

Your second paragraph ends with your desire to express your world view, and then the third paragraph begins with "I currently struggle in finding how to leave my legacy behind." What?? It would be more clear to the reader what direction you are taking the paper if you connect your paragraphs from back to front. In this instance, you could start your paragraph with something about how art is your passion, but you aren''t sure how to leave a positive impact on the world through art. You should then segue into Gaudi, instead of just saying "Gaudi is an inspiration to me" out of nowhere. You could introduce it by saying "One artistic figure who impacted his world was Antonio Gaudi, an inspiration to artists everywhere" or something like this. Just making your sentences connect to the one before and the one after would greatly improve the flow. Like I said before, your third paragraph would flow better if you worked yourself in more than just at the end.

In your 5th paragraph, you said "This will help me become a more imaginary person..." and i think you meant "imaginative," as you are most definitely real. =) This paragraph discuss many things, but connects them all to lead to a conclusion, so I think it''s well done. Your last three paragraphs after this talk about the world and the way you will connect to it (art) very well and very eloquently. The flow in these paragraphs works very well. Overall, you paper is an interesting look at how you plan to better yourself and the world by learning to connect and connecting through art. Good job!

I gave you a 6 because even though some of the language was a little dense, I thought most of the thoughts flowed really well.

I tried to connect each sentence, something I didn''''t pay much attention to in my first draft. I think this helped the paper.

2.) The flow in the paper is personal and effective. There is no passive voice and each sentence is significant. There are certain words like "would," "could," "should," and "hope" that are used too much in the second half of the paper that make it less effective and more weak. Try substituting present-tense words instead of future.

This review wasn''''t extremely helpful.

3.) 3. Flow was good. You were careful not to use too much fluff, but there is still a lot that you can elaborate on. (I’ve already given some examples.) Watch your comma errors. Last sentence of the 6th paragraph, you need a comma… “ I must connect with others, and in order to do so, I must be compassionate.”

In your flow, it seemed that you assumed compassion. Link your intro about good and evil people and the ability to make choices to your own vision for the future. Obviously, you’ve made the decision to do good. Is it your goal to convince others to do good? Mention that in your conclusion. I felt you kind of dropped off in your conclusion. What is your VISION? Your LEGACY? What is the purpose of college?

Overall, good.

I give you at 6.

Again emphasised that they wanted more personal specifics about my leadership goals.

4.) Your main goal here will be to make sure that you are being specific. Too often, you seem to tell us what you''d like to be talking about, without actually talking about it. Examples:

"While I hope to leave a series of visual statements, or at least one artistic statement of some kind, as my legacy, I hope my life can also serve as a message." What kind of visual statements? What kind of artistic statement? A message for what?

"Print media is a powerful tool because it is something people are constantly exposed to and actively participate in, unknowingly or not."

Powerful for doing what? How do people participate in it? What is the difference between knowingly participating in print media and unknowingly doing it?

You don''t have to answer all these questions, of course, but asking yourself questions about each sentence will help you develop your ideas and not simply skim through them. You should try to avoid operating at the level of generalities whenever possible.

Also, condense ideas when it is advantageous to do so:

"Gaudí was an artist with an original view of the world. He saw buildings, shapes, and nature as one." Why not "Gaudi viewed the world original [or: in an original manner], seeing buildings, shapes, and nature as one"?

I tried to go back and answer these questions by adding more specifics about my goals.

5.) Your flow was very good. There was a logical and follow-able order of thoughts with the effective transitions. You could improve the flow by breaking up larger paragraphs as I suggested earlier. Any paragraph that has more than one topic in it should be broken up.

I made the paragraphs shorter and tried not to ramble as much.