My thesis statement is as follows, “While social media is a valuable public tool, moderation is necessary to avoid impairing one’s social skills, and its use is better suited for maintaining long-lasting friendships than creating them”. 

I believe there are some good aspects of my thesis statement, emphasizing moderation as a necessity when it comes to social media. Temperance provides a level of specificity to incorporate into the essay, in addition to maintaining rather than creating friendships. I think an improvement on, “impairing one’s social skills” portion is needed. It is generally broad and it would have been better to be more specific in this spot. I could have gone into detail about how excessive use can hinder one’s social skills. I also believe my stance does not have one focus since moderation and maintaining instead of creating are two separate ideas entirely. My viewpoint could have used more evidence from either text since my view varies from both.

I learned more about writing in my own voice, using my perspective on topics is not something I am used to incorporating. It was tricky trying something I have never used in any previous writings. I certainly have more work to do to refine my writing in my own opinions, in addition to summarizing texts. It has been over a year since I have had to write an essay concerning literature, since over the past year all of my prompts have been solely scientific. I was reminded of preparing a thesis statement, outlining various paragraphs for my body paragraphs, in addition to writing a conclusion that properly summarizes the essay and each of my points. Additionally, I remembered my process of revising and attempting to cut down on thoughts that become long-winded when I get into the flow of writing.

Primarily, reducing excessive summaries of Konnikova and Chen’s pieces was my central focus in terms of revision. I often found that I had written too many details about the works integrated into my essay, some of which took away from the main focus. Following my meeting with Mya, I realized that I had to weave my view into more sections since I am used to keeping paragraphs focused on one issue rather than creating a conversation as was required here. After adding my viewpoints into more paragraphs, I noticed how much stronger my piece sounded than before. Even small statements where I input my opinion solidified my argument. There were also many points where expanding upon what I meant or inserting further details to utilize specificity was helpful. Including scenarios to relate to the reader created better engagement overall.

Going into Paper #2, I have an advantage in formulating an argument and a conversation with literature. I have found that utilizing They Say/I Say has also been a fantastic tool in building solid paragraphs. It would be preferred to make Paper #2 far shorter than the first since my impression is that I overdid it here since I expanded so many of my statements to produce more comprehensive points. I think there is certainly a more precise way of making a statement work well without so much text. I also believe that I will reread the texts more frequently this time since, when the deadline approached recently, I found myself forgetting aspects of both works read weeks prior. My annotation greatly helped, so this time, delving deeper into my analysis will be beneficial to responding to a given prompt. From the start, I will be using my voice far more in each paragraph throughout the work, so I will not have to revisit to state my opinions. All of these factors will be advantageous when peer review comes around, to get further feedback on using my voice and specificity.