As the semester progressed, I spent a lot of time working on learning outcome #2. This learning outcome included integrating quotes or evidence with my own ideas. Towards the beginning of the semester I struggled with this because in high school, we never tied our own ideas into the essay or quotes and wrote in third person, so we didn’t share our own voice. Looking back on my project #1 and comparing it to project #3, I definitely improved the strength of integrating quotes and evidence into my writing. In project #1, I put a quote from either Lizzie Widdicombe’s work or my Favorite Meal Essay and then explained how it connected to myself after the evidence and didn’t tie all the connections together. In my most recent essay, project #3, I made an improvement in the way I selected, integrated and explained quotes. In my final draft a specific example that I believe shows I understand learning outcome #2, is in my first body paragraph. I started off this paragraph introducing a quote from the collection of journals in 1918 and then used a signaling phrase from the template in “They say, I say” when I said, “His youngest daughter Caroline explains how her father’s death changed their whole lives;…”Following the quote I was able to connect it to the pandemic we are experiencing today. Also, something I worked on this semester was adding in my own voice, so in this paragraph I talked about the financial stress I am currently experiencing by not being able to work. This is something that many other Americans are also going through right now and many were in the 1918 flu pandemic. I was able to connect all three of those pieces together and end the paragraph with a lesson I have learned during these tough times that even during a virus outbreak, it is a big burden on health care but also the financial stability of the country, as we’ve seen in the news for example, that many businesses and restaurants will not be able to open their doors when the country opens back up. The improvements I made from project #1 to project #3 show that I was successful in completing learning outcome #2 but in the future, I will always work on how I select, integrate and explain my quotes.
