Analysis from Writing Center tips

            I made my visit to the writing center just before class on Wednesday so that I would have time to make edits to my paper before we began our peer reviews in class.  I met with Cameron at the writing center and the two of us proceeded to go through my paper.  Cameron had me read it out loud so that I would be able to catch any grammatical errors or typos I may have made in the paper.  I was able to correct several of these errors thanks to this method and I will probably make use of it more in the future when I look over a finalized project. 

            Overall my trip was not very fruitful in regards to changing the substance of my paper.  Cameron helped me find when sentences did not flow well together and when I needed to make a better transition between paragraphs.  He also advised me on the elimination of one of my paragraphs because it did not pertain to the argument very well.  At the time I disagreed with him, but after my peer review session and visiting you in office hours I decided that perhaps I could be wrong considering how many people commented on it.  After deleting that paragraph I went over my thesis and made sure I tied back to it in every paragraph and then proofed my paper one more time.

            After finishing that proof I looked at changing another aspect of my paper that was commented on during both my peer review and in my meeting with you during office hours.  The critical analysis of my second visual was rather sparse in comparison to my first.  I had done this intentionally in order to highlight the importance of the first as my main argument but came to realize that I needed to elaborate a bit on the second visual.  This is where I ran into some difficulty.  Chuck Asay’s cartoon to the left depicts a convicted murderer being dragged into a gas chamber complaining about how his life is sacred.  The guard helps to identify how hypocritical it would be for a justice system to condone a mass murderer’s right to live when he has taken the lives of many.  This allowed me to analyze the hypocrisy in a justice system that condones a murderer’s right to live.  I had to do more analysis.

            I analyzed the dialogue more closely and realized the use of the word sacred implied religious context.  I do not want my paper to be about the religious arguments of the death penalty.  It was this realization along with the realization that I would have to incorporate my thesis somehow into this religious argument that convinced me to leave the word sacred unanalyzed.  I believe my paper is better off without this analysis because it was too large a topic with little relation to my thesis.