Paper Revision

I was definitely disappointed with my performance when I received my grade on my “Savage Inequalities” paper. I understand the comments and can accept that my work needs improvement. I felt the strengths of my paper were equal to my weaknesses. This probably made my argument weak overall because there should be more strengths than weaknesses. My biggest strength was the detailed examples I provided to support my argument. I tried to include as many supportive examples as I could so the reader, the University of Dayton’s Department of English, would fully understand the depth of the East St. Louis’ problems. Providing more than one example of my argument shows the University of Dayton that the consequences of the chemical plants vary to problems in the home to problems in the school system.
My biggest weakness in the paper is my outside source. My source was supportive of my thesis, which stated that students need to be aware of problems in America before giving their attention to other countries and their civilian hardships, because the census study showed that because the economic condition of East St. Louis was so low, the unemployment rate sky rocketed, which drove the economic situation further into the ground. Although my outside source was helpful, I did not correctly site its use in my paper. I should have introduced the source better and explained in more detail why the numbers were important and how it supported my thesis. This high rate of unemployment as a direct result of poor economic situations in East St. Louis is an example of a problem in America that needs attention but is not being recognized.
The other two major weaknesses I had were citation and connecting my statements, examples, and explanations to my thesis. I presented numerous examples from the text and did not accurately site them all. It is not often that I write a paper where I take so many examples from the test so I thought that when I cited information at the beginning of the paragraph and continued to use examples from that source, I was doing it right. During the class revision, and the revisions I had done outside class, I was told I needed to work on my citation. I went through my paper several time focusing just on citation and I thought I had finally done it correctly. After receiving my paper back and examining my words two weeks later my eyes are more open to my mistakes. I can see that I need to cite every example and each number fact I incorporate into my paper. Two times in my paper, in a few paragraphs that make up the bulk of my paper, the comments were to relate my arguments back to my thesis. In order to do this, I need to fix my concluding sentences on every one my paragraphs to clearly state why I provided the reader with the examples I did and how it helps prove my thesis.
I do agree with the comments made and I knew those were going to be my problem areas what I began writing the paper. I thought that if I made enough effort to go back time and time again revising and changing my sentence structure that I would eventually get it right and my arguments would support my thesis. I can now see that even though I tried my best, I did not strengthen my weaknesses enough to receive an A on my “Savage Inequalities” paper. When I do my revision, I will be sure to look at the comments and fix my paper accordingly.