In my first essay in this class I just threw everything on the paper and didn’t look at my thesis to see if it tied together or if it even sounded like a fluent essay. Whereas when I did my second essay, Cooking In America, which is the Meal Analysis Essay, I took the time to make sure that everything fit together and flowed. I got all the quotes that I wanted first and made sure it all fit and everything worked in each paragraph before I actually began to type the actual essay out. When I revised in my early phases I only looked for surface errors and tiny sentence level mistakes. When I went through on my second essay, I looked for the little things that went down to the sentence that they worked together and that everything sounded right. I also worked on how to strengthen my thesis and how to tie it into my whole essay including the conclusion. The conclusion was another place that I worked on that I learned how to improve upon. I learned how to tie in vital information, such as “I believe that we should sit down and learn the ways that our grandparents learned to cook or even our great grandparents if they are still around in order to fix the negative surroundings of people not wanting to cook anymore” (Soucie) to make my last big point. Whereas I would have just left that point out in any of my other essays. Through my journals you can see the evolution of my drafting and revision process in journal 9 I discuss “I spent a good chunk of my revision time making sure my sentences were fluent and that everything actually made sense when in a whole paragraph instead of being a choppy hot mess. I also spent a lot of time making sure I had all of my small grammatical mistakes in line because in my first time through I usually never focus on that its in my revision and editing process that I focus on this part. Finally I focused in on my thesis to try and tie it into my paper and make it sound like a thesis statement as best as I possibly could” and in journal 13 I discuss “On this paper I spent considerably more time and energy into it than on my last paper. I began my process by finding all the quotes that I was going to use throughout and where I thought that they would fit best. My next step was that I actually put them into sentences that would fit with the quote. I know that this paper is better than my last because I spent more time explaining my quotes, revising my paper, and actually writing my paper. I spent most of my time explaining my quote on this paper and trying to tie in the prompt. I should have tried to spend more time on revising than I actually did.”