Commenting on the Comments

I've just gotten my paper back with comments and suggestions, so here goes:

1.) What was the most helpful piece of advice you received? Explain.
I'd say the most helpful advice I received was Megan's advice to explain myself more.  Several times she commented "tell me more", leading me to believe that I didn't flesh out my argument with enough examples to fully carry my point.  I will admit that I thought I had enough story in the piece to illustrate my history, but I think what she means is that I should explain more about how my experiences specifically affected my writing and my views on writing in general.  That was the whole point of the assignment after all, so it would seem that I need to work on relating each significant event in my history back to my views on writing and being a writer.

2.)  What was the least helpful piece of advice you received? Explain.

Not much of what Megan had to say was unhelpful.  I appreciate that she enjoyed the organization of my paper, calling it "clever", and I am glad I made a good choice in doing so.  Least helpful, I guess, would have to be her comment that she found it interesting that my writing career was finished after I gave everything I had to the Freshman Seminar speech on plagiarism.  I really did give it my last real effort, and along with it, my last real shred of confidence.  I thought I had really made it clear that that was the last of what I really had to give. I don't agree with her that anything was "fixed" with that piece of writing; I simply gave it all I had left so I could be saved the shame of being expelled from school. My point being that her comment seemed a bit ambiguous whereas the others were fairly straightforward, so I'd like to talk to her and understand what she meant by it.

3.)  What questions do you have about Megan's comments?

I guess I need to know what she's looking for when she says "tell me more". Frankly, I thought I had told quite a bit, so I need to know how to flesh out the piece without becoming verbose (or at least more that I already am!).  I also want to know what she meant when she commented about it being interesting to her that my confidence was "fixed" with a piece of writing.  If I gave that impression, it was a false one; in my opinion, my writing confidence is non-existent at best.

4.)  What are your plans for revision? Be specific. I should be able to understand exactly how your work will change in exactly which places.

First, I plan to speak to Megan about how to expand on what I said in each place where she asked for "more" in the comments.  I'm not really sure what she's looking for here, but I plan to get a better idea of how to do that without going overboard. This means that I will expand on the details I gave at least once in each paragraph and then attempt to answer the specific questions she asked me after asking for "more".  Secondly, Megan asked me several times to describe how I felt about writing during significant events in my history.  I had not really done this in all places that required it, and it seems I got away from the original assignment in not doing so. In the next draft, I will add those thoughts to the description of each event I related and then explain how each event affected my views on writing.   Lastly, I will attempt to answer questions put to me by Megan when she asked me "What makes a 'good' writer" and "how do you define a 'good' writer". I realize I made that statement about me being "a very good writer" without explaining myself at all. Therefore I will revise my paper at that point with an attempt to define what I believe to be "good" writing, how to identify "good" writing, and why I called myself "good" once upon a time.