Portfolio Final Exam

*Final Essay*

Nora Ephron, Author of “Revision and Life: Take it from the top-Again”, writes, "…I suspect there is just so much you can teach college students about revision; a gift for revision may be a developmental stage--like a 2-year-old’s sudden ability to place one block on top of another--that comes along somewhat later, in one’s mid-20s, say; most people may not be particularly good at it, or even interested in it, until then.

When I was in college, I revised nothing. I wrote out my papers in longhand, typed them up and turned them in. It would never have crossed my mind that what I had produced was only a first draft and that I had more work to do; the idea was to get to the end, and once you had got to the end you were finished."

Many writers, especially from an older generation probably felt they were finished writing when the paper was done. When I was younger, I remember feeling the same way.
In my high school days, I would write first and maybe second draft, type it on the computer and revised spelling and punctuation only as I typed along. I just didn’t get that there was such a process to writing. I agree with Ephron when she states, “ …a gift for revision may be a developmental stage—like a 2-year olds’ sudden ability to place one block on top of another-- that comes along somewhere later, in one’s mid 20s, say; most people may not be particularly good at it, or even interested in it, until then.” Maybe it’s because of my age, now that I’m older, that I actually care, or take interest in what my papers look and read like. Perhaps, it just wasn’t stressed, until now, that revising 2nd, 3rd and even 4 or more drafts were a vital role in creating a paper.
Along with learning new essay writing techniques, such as use of templates and citations, I had to master the rough draft revision process through the computer. Throughout writing 101 I still wrote many assignments, paragraphs, and sentences on paper first. This class has definitely taught me the importance of revising a paper; not only has peer review helped, simply reading a paper out loud made paper writing better in the drafting stages. I caught many errors through this process. Although I may not even be “particularly good” as ephron says, at writing yet, writing 101 had opened my mind to the whole writing process. This class is just the beginning of my writing career.


Crystal Black