Throughout all the projects I have written in this class, I believe I have used my sources to support my thesis in the paper, but even before I start writing I use these quotations. I worked with several pieces for project three before narrowing in on the one’s I wanted to use. This took time spent with the work to understand it and decide which I agree with or not. The time spent even before writing helped be really understand the perspective I wanted to take on, and they ended up framing my thesis. Unlike the traditional way of using sources–choose quotes that support the thesis–I created a thesis around the quotes I found interesting. This ensured support in the text. This differs substantially from my first paper, where I knew what I wanted to say but a scrambled to find quotes that supported my ideas. Early on, I found myself changing my quotes several times throughout the piece. However, spending more time with the pieces I wanted to use beforehand turned out being much more helpful later on. I think this was really clear in project three, with Kaleigh’s piece. I used this several different parts of her piece throughout mine, integrating her ideas into my own and my other sources. Her piece included many examples of sacrifices and consideration that I kept pasted on the top of my document for much of my writing process because I found it so useful in helping me ground where my thesis was coming from. I think doing this helped me spend even more time with the sources so I could figure out exactly how I wanted to integrate them into my piece, and overall I let the quotes shape the piece naturally instead of jamming them into paragraphs to meet my source count.
