Introduction to "Community: Laying the Foundation"

Revision: I chose my Community Paper, “Community: Laying the Foundation for Our Future” because I believe that I had the start of a good paper, but I very obviously got lost in the bigness of the piece and floundered. I wanted to redeem the paper from its unsatisfactory state of being and to help it along, giving it the ability to stand on its own merit.

Before English 101D, I had never before used the discussion boards to post a work in progress, but I have found that they are a wonderful tool! I have had the benefit of my fellow classmates’ and instructors’ insights, encouragement, and criticism so that I gain not only a better paper, but also a better perspective. The discussion boards helped me to see things in new ways and to develop both my insight and analysis. These growing skills helped me to write and revise this paper.

In the Community Unit, we were to write a 3-4 page paper that affirms or challenges one of the chapter’s three assumptions:

a. Communities provide us with a sense of stability
b. Communities serve our needs
c. Communities accept us for who we are

I chose to affirm the statement that communities provide us with a sense of stability.
Once I chose this paper for the revision, I took a long, hard look at what needed the most attention. I then set about tackling the least supportive paragraph (paragraph #3). I eliminated my too broad—and not very supportable—topic sentence and replaced it with the next sentence which had a much more narrow focus and was easier to support. I then added a number of sentences to the end of that paragraph to help tie it into my thesis statement, something that I had neglected to do originally. I also had to rewrite the ending sentence of the paragraph #4 for the same reason: it was too broad and did not tie in. Oh, and in case you do not recognize a pattern here, I had to do the same thing for paragraph #5. If nothing else, this revision has taught me to pay as much attention to an ending sentence as to the topic sentence! I also gladly removed a couple of scattered clichés to restore my paper’s integrity. It felt good to work through this revision. It reminded me of the feeling you get when you come home from a week long camping trip and finish that first, long hot shower: cleaned up!