Annotation Reflection: Personally, I think I am achieving my annotation goals of including more connections and asking more questions. While I am annotating, I keep these goals in mind and make sure to mark portions in the text that relate to other topics and make me think about how these points could be elaborated.

What is the surrounding context? Yo-Yo Ma’s “Necessary Edges” was originally published on the World Post in January of 2014. The World Post is an online news and blog site created through a partnership between the Huffington Post and the nonpartisan think tank, the Berggruen Institute of Governance. It was launched during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Contributors to the site include Elon Musk, an engineer and business mogul, Tony Blair, the former prime minister of Britain, and Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google. Furthermore, despite being a cellist and songwriter, Yo-Yo Ma has received numerous awards for a variety of reasons. In addition to his seventeen Grammy awards, he has been awarded the World Economic Forum’s Crystal Award, the National Medal of Arts, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. This variety emphasizes Ma’s point in his essay that the arts connect to everything as they enable us to broaden our thinking surrounding our experiences.

What is the circumstantial context? The circumstantial context includes the circumstances that have prompted me to read a specific text. In this case, I read Yo-Yo Ma’s “Necessary Edges” not only because it was assigned for homework in my English class, but it would relate to the prompt of our third essay. Reading “Necessary Edges” would enable me to gather thoughts and ideas about the importance of art and how I would argue its vitality that I could include within the essay. As a result, I would hopefully do well as I am supporting my argument with strong pieces of evidence. When I sit to read something, I typically do so for either enjoyment or with the intent to learn something. Certain texts, such as novels, I read in order to unwind and let my imagination run free whereas when I read more informative texts, I want to know more about the specific topic after I have finished.

What is the intentional context? Yo-Yo Ma’s reason for writing “Necessary Edges” is to bring attention to the importance of the arts within education and the world. He argues that incorporating art into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics will promote an equilibrium between them as art requires one to think beyond the scope of reason. He intends to make the reader aware of the fact that the arts add meaning to our lives because they are able to explore its hidden potential because they invoke the passions within us, our drive to create.

Further Reference Descartes’ Error: Descartes claimed, “I think therefore I am” which means that the act of doubting one’s own existence serves as proof of the reality of one’s own mind. There must be a thinking ‘self’ for there to be a thought. Though according to Antonio Demasio, Descartes made an error in this statement. Descartes’ error was that he made a dualist separation between the mind and the body, rationality, and emotion. Looking this up made it more clear to me when Ma explained that art and music allow us to express our emotions in a different form, resulting in us to think more deeply about them because all of our thoughts, body, mind, and rationality are intertwined with one another. Industrial Societies: Industrial societies are societies driven by the use of technology to enable mass production. This helps me understand Ma’s argument because currently, we are living in a world to make, not create and add meaning to our lives because we forgetting about the importance of the art of expression. Silk Road Project: The Silk Road Project was founded by Yo-Yo Ma and it promotes collaboration among artists and institutions which encourages multicultural artistic exchange. After researching what the Silk Road Project’s mission is, it became clear to me that we need to bring ideas together from the “edges” to meet them at the core. This is the only way to bring people from different backgrounds together and establish equilibrium within our world.

While reading through my first paper again, I kept an eye out for devices that I used to connect the different parts of my essay. I noticed that I tended to follow a pattern of adding onto a point, followed by elaboration and then cause and effect, especially in my body paragraphs. For addition, I commonly used ‘furthermore’, ‘in addition’ and ‘also’ as transition devices. For my elaboration transitions, I frequently used transition devices along the lines of ‘in other words’. When connecting cause and effect, I tended to use phrases including ‘as a result’, ‘so’, and ‘therefore’. Furthermore, I included pointing terms such as ‘this’ and ‘these’ which enabled the reader to refer back to concepts that I stated beforehand. Finally, I noticed that I repeated all my key terms consistently throughout my paper. These included ‘power’, ‘thinking’, ‘health’, ‘perceptions’, ‘metaphors’, ‘impact’, and ‘experiences’. I would use synonyms for these terms so that I did not use the same words throughout the entire essay, but it enabled the central idea surrounding these key terms to stay the same. As I constantly repeated my key terms throughout my paper, readers were able to grasp an understanding of my argument. In addition, through my use of transition devices and pointing terms between my thoughts, my ideas did not become lost and become confusing to comprehend throughout my essay.

Revision Strategy: In my last paper, I should have done a better job of stating the relationships between my ideas as I go through and explain my argument. I did not continuously relate back to my thesis as I often did not include a claim sentence. While writing this paper, I need to make sure that I state my claim early in the paragraph and explain how it relates to my thesis. The claims I include need to represent my own ideas and be debatable in order to be strong.

After meeting and discussing my essay with Sarah Smith, I determined that my overall revision goal for my second essay is to organize my ideas so that they are coherent. Also, I need to change some of my wording explaining my thoughts so that the reader is able to grasp a better understanding of them. In order to achieve this goal, I need to follow a series of steps.

First, I will need to re-read my essay and take into account comments my peers made on it. I need to look at places where they suggested I could cut parts out and where I could re-arrange my wording and sentences. Then I will need to read my essay out loud to myself. I have always found that hearing your essay orally enables you to notice spots that require revision. While reading, I will be marking places where I need to change the wording or sentence structure. I will also note places that could use a little more elaboration to make my ideas more clear.  Already, I have marked places, such as my thesis and introduction that need revision. I need to re-word my thesis and break it up a little bit to make it more clear, introduce the specific narrative projects within my introduction, and cut out redundant information in order to make my introduction just one paragraph. Furthermore, I need to connect my personal anecdote with evidence from one of the articles so that the reader can understand the significance of its inclusion. Finally, I will take all of the suggestions and revisions I have made myself or been given and put them into my paper. Following all these steps will help me reach my goal of creating a concise and coherent paper. My biggest challenge in accomplishing this goal will be deciding which thoughts and claims to keep and which to cut out. In order to tackle this issue, I will make notes on how each relates to my thesis and if the thought is relevant, I will keep it. I will continue repeating this process until all my claims have a direct correlation with my argument. I will use the They Say/I Say and Litte Seagull books for suggestions on how to write my arguments so that they are concise.

End Note: Your essay is off to a great start! You included some great points, specifically those when you reference the narrative projects. The inclusion of these real stories strengthens your essay as a whole. Though I would elaborate on some comments that you made. In your thesis, I would expand on how narratives play a role in understanding who we are. This would sharpen the focus of and strengthen your thesis. Perhaps something along the lines of how we deal with experiences shapes our identity? There was another point that you made about how narratives need to be created in an unconscious way. Explaining why would help readers understand why narratives can so easily be swayed to become inauthentic. Finally, enter further discussion in your conclusion about how ‘narratives are a very important aspect of human communication.’ You have not discussed it in the rest of your essay so I would include a paragraph that explains this so that it is more clear why you are including this point in your conclusion. In addition, there are some sentences that I would restructure and I included some suggestions in my margin comments. Overall, your essay looks great so far!

Both Galen Strawson Natalie Gray’s roommate Lauren argue that the way we put our experiences into context leads to the creation of our identity and life story. In “My Life is not a Story”, Strawson worries that if everyone stories themselves, they become inauthentic. He argues that if we live our life to create a story, we are not being true to ourselves as we are trying to become someone we are not. We are fabricating ourselves, accepting a lie as our truth. According to Strawson, “The narrativists think that this is an essentially narrative matter, an essentially narrative construal of the form of our lives. But many of us don’t even get as far as Larkinian half-identification, and we have at best bits and pieces, rather than a story.” For Strawson, we do not have one overarching identity defined by our past experiences because our memories of them are only a fragment of our recollections. Therefore, our life story only covers part of who we are. In contrast, when Lauren discusses her hiking excursion on the Appalachian Trail with Natalie, she makes it clear these experiences shaped who she is today. For Lauren, “when you’re stuck in the woods for two weeks with ten people you’ve never met, and two and a half of those days you are literally just by yourself, you really really learn who you are because you just have figure out how to do things on your own and I think it really shaped my identity and I did not have a personal identity that I knew about before then” (3:44-4:11). She was able to find her personal identity while alone in the forest because she learned what she was capable of. For me, while I agree with Strawson’s belief that if we live our lives to create a story, we are creating a fabrication of ourselves, I believe that our experiences do shape us and lead us into making decisions that define us, building our own identity in the process. Our identity is made up out of multiple elements and one story does not determine who we are. We are constantly changing and reshaping our identity throughout different stages in our lives as we do not follow one singular narrative.

When reading through Galen Strawson’s essay “I am not a Story” for a second time, I began to agree with his point of view and his belief that not all of us are programmed to think in a narrative way. Prior to re-reading this essay, I full-heartedly believed that we do have a life story with an internalized self-narration. My perspective started to shift when I read through Strawson’s statement saying that “Poor memory…forces him to think through things for himself because he can’t remember what others have said.” After reading through this, I see where Strawson’s point of view that not all of us are programmed to follow a narrative comes from. You can never remember all of your past experiences in a moment in order to have them dictate your life. Rather, when you are in that specific instant, in the present, you have to think things through yourself without following any narrative.

Furthermore, when I conducted a little research on a few terms, I began to understand why Strawson holds such a staunch stand against the pro-Narratives. Strawson claims that “the popularity of the narrativitst view is prima facie evidence that there are such people”. Prima facie means based on the first impression and accepted as correct until proven otherwise. People, including myself, have taken the narrativist view as correct because they have not thought about it otherwise. It was always indoctrinated within us that we follow a narrative that creates our life story, so we never considered that it may all just be a theory. Another term that helped ‘clear the fog’ when I looked it up was when Strawson says that narrativists view individuals as having a “certain curriculum vitae. Curriculum vitae, I found out, is Latin for “course of life”. So, when following the narrativisit point of view, one only has one specific “course of life” that follows one narrative. Though now I realize that this is not true. Our life cannot be summed up in one story because it is far too complex and everchanging.

While reading Julie Beck’s essay “Life Stories”, her statement “In telling the story of how you became who you are, and of who you’re on your way to becoming, the story itself becomes a part of who you are” stood out to me. It made me realize that your life story is essentially your identity which has been created through all your experiences in life and how you interpret them. Life stories encompass everything that you are and include all aspects of your being. Another moment within Beck’s essay that stood out to me is when she noted that “storytelling, then-fictional or nonfictional, realistic or embellished with dragons-is a way of making sense of the world around us.” In other words, life stories put sense into life which before reading this, I never really considered. I do use past experiences to make sense of and navigate a new one, though I never thought of how that relates to my life story, which I understand does. What I have experienced throughout my life influences my story and it is those experiences that I place into context in order to make sense of the unknown.

Though there was one point where I partially disagreed with what Beck was saying. She mentions that “the way people recount experiences to others seems to shape the way they end up remembering those vents…One is that people tailor stories they tell to their audiences and the context.” Personally, I believe that this means that you are fabricating your life story in order to make think you are someone they envision. This connects back to Galen Strawson’s point in his essay “I am not a Story” about how life stories are only made up of fragments of your life, resulting in it to be inauthentic because it does not include its entirety and the truths behind the experiences.

At the beginning of Galen Strawson’s essay “I am not a Story”, I did not agree with his point of view at all. When Strawson claimed that it is “false that everyone stories themselves, and false that it’s always a good thing”, I could not help wondering but why? Do, or do we not create our own story when we live our lives? Prior to reading this essay, I held the belief that we do create our own ‘life story’ through everything that has happened in our lives. Our experiences shape us as a person, building up our identity which eventually leads to our ‘life story’. Though my perspective changed when Galen quotes from Salter’s Light Years, “There is no complete life. There are only fragments. We are born to have nothing, to have it pour through our hands.” He is explaining how the memories of our experiences are not complete. Therefore, we do no have the ability to either narrate or build our ‘story’ because we lose parts of what we remember. As a result, Galen claims, a life story would be inauthentic because if we live life to create a story, we are not being true to ourselves since we are trying to become someone we are not.

After reading through this essay, I have come to agree with some aspects of Galen’s argument, especially with the point he made about how life stories are inauthentic. When living my life, I have always felt that I make choices based on what others would expect out of me. In some cases, I do not make them after what I truly want, rather what others want to see out of me. Especially those close to me expect me to exhibit certain traits, characteristics, so I make decisions that will always exemplify them, even if they are not true to me. I now realize that I am creating a ‘life story’ that only includes fragments of who I really am as a person. It misses key pieces, impacting its authenticity.

Have you introduced the involved materials, along with pertinent voices? I did include a brief summary of each of the three texts and who wrote them. Though I did not include quick information about each of the authors and I am still a little unsure of whether or not I should. Also, I included this information about the texts in my introduction, which lengthened it significantly. One of my goals is to shorten my introduction to make it more concise, leaving me wondering if I should leave this important information within it or move it to one of my body paragraphs when I start using quotes from the texts.

Are your paragraphs a reasonable length? Most of my paragraphs are a reasonable length, except for my introduction and conclusion which are a little long. I split up my conclusion into two paragraphs to compensate for its length, but I am still searching for a way in which I can make it more concise. My conclusion could be shortened a little. Looking back onto it, perhaps I could cut out some of the parts where I summarize a little too much and replace those parts with points with new directions for thought.

Does your conclusion-while rooted in your paper’s main themes-also introduce new directions for thought? My conclusion should include new directions for thoughts. I did relate back to my paper’s main themes, though I did a bit too much summarizing while doing so. I did not extend the conversation and should think about ways I could do so to strengthen my final remarks and leave the reader wondering as to how metaphors impact their own lives.

Does your paper follow correct MLA style when citing a source in-text? Although I did include in-text citations, I am unsure if I did them following the correct MLA format. After each piece of evidence, I just put the title of the essay I used it from after. I need to refer back to resources that explain the correction MLA citation style in order to ensure that I do everything correctly. I also cannot forget to include an MLA formatted Works Cited page at the end of my paper.

Part 1: The experience I had writing my first draft was very similar to what Anne Lamott described in “Shitty First Drafts”. I just had to get down all my thoughts and put them into words. At first, I had an introduction that was even longer than a page. Though I noticed that this helped me formulate my essay, which Lamott also emphasizes. Because I had everything I wanted to mention written down, all I had left to do was weed out the irrelevant information and then reorganize my thoughts to make my paper coherent. I have to admit, I was very surprised that Lamott discussed how the first draft does not need to be terrific. I always thought the rough draft had to somewhat resemble the finished product but it is a sign of relief to know that it is not the case. I can use my first draft as a stepping stone to organizing my thoughts on the way to a brilliant final paper.

Part 2- Revision Plan Strategy: My overall goal is to reorganize parts of my essay in order to make it more concise and coherent as a whole. In order to achieve this goal, I will have to follow a series of steps to ensure that my essay is the best it can possibly be.

First, I will need to re-read my essay and take into account comments my peers made on it. I need to look at places where they suggested I could cut parts out and where I could re-arrange my wording and sentences. Then I will need to read my essay out loud to myself. I have always found that hearing your essay orally enables you to notice spots that require revision. While reading, I will be marking places where I need to change the wording or sentence structure. I will also note places that could use a little more elaboration to make my ideas more clear. Once I have done this, I will let another person read my essay. I have always found that these insights from others have proved to be the most helpful tool in improving my papers. When I read through what I have written by myself, I often miss simple grammatical errors which others are able to immediately point out when reading through the same text. Furthermore, I have discovered that when discussing my writing with my peers, they are able to offer suggestions to improve my sentence structure to improve the clarity of the text as a whole. When I am writing and reading through my own text, everything seems to make sense because they are my own thoughts as words. Though others reviewing my paper do not know what was going through my head while I was writing and therefore are able to give recommendations on where I can place revisions that will make my paper more understandable to everyone.

Finally, I will take all of the suggestions and revisions I have made myself or been given and put them into my paper. Following all these steps will help me reach my goal of creating a concise and coherent paper. My biggest challenge in accomplishing this goal will be deciding which thoughts and claims to keep and which to cut out. In order to tackle this issue, I will make notes on how each relates to my thesis and if the thought is relevant, I will keep it. I will continue repeating this process until all my claims have a direct correlation with my argument.