Outcome 4 is easily the most underestimated, as it is at first glance an incredibly dull and seemingly unrewarding task to revise a paper. However, the power of outside feedback and editing can be the difference between a piece of garbage and a publishable work. The first draft of any paper is never of excellent quality, and by analyzing your own work you can vastly improve the strength of your paper’s argument. Ranging from simple grammatical errors to the addition of several pages, revision should improve the paper’s clarity and make the argument as compelling as possible.

            My second major paper is certainly my best example of a revised paper, and to quote Outcome 4 itself, I am certain that my paper “demonstrates substantial and successful revision.” Yes, that bullet is extremely vague, but by taking a look at my first draft we can see the changes that emerged from the revision process. There are countless grammatical issues present in the first draft as pointed out by my classmates. Ranging from huge clarification errors to noticeable grammatical errors, these issues I had missed at first almost seemed to be screaming “you need to stop writing your papers past midnight.” A majority of these fixes were made for the second draft, but a large issue that you pointed out in my paper was that I seem to be shifting blame onto those that use racial stereotypes rather than on White Chicks itself. Your end comment certainly sent me on the right track, and I made sure any point in my paper that initially blamed Americans for using these harmful stereotypes instead focused on how White Chicks was reinforcing the Otherization of blacks, not the usage of the stereotypes themselves. By clarifying that the film was isolating races (rather than encouraging the joke’s usage by Americans) I was able to take a more persuasive route that focused on the film rather than Americans.

            By fixing both large and small errors in my paper, I was able to fix both issues of clarity and persuasion in this paper. Small errors tend to distort the meaning of an argument; and by fixing my grammatical and diction errors, my argument is much clearer. In order to further bolster the persuasiveness of my paper, I was able to reshape my claim and attribute the racist effects of White Chicks to its isolating (Otherization) influence. These modifications were crucial to making the paper effective persuasively, and “Black Blockbusters” has certainly proven that I’ve learned to edit effectively and consider other’s advice to improve my writing.