Revised Essay – Self-Reflection

In revising my Frankenstein essay, I attempted to, much like Frankenstein himself, stitch together the old pieces of my former essay and give them new life. I blended my discussion on the motif of mutability in Frankenstein and Mary Shelley’s apparent warning against experimenting without caution with my third essay in which I argue that the changing landscape of technological writing demands that a writer make conscious and cautious choices in regards to their medium. I used some parts of the third essay but mostly relied on the concepts from that piece with most the work coming from my second essay and new forwarding of these ideas. The story of Frankenstein itself is a mutable one that has been retold in different media throughout the years, so in revising I decided to add more close reading into technological texts outside the original Frankenstein novel. Instead of mere close reading, I believe that examining this text and its later multimedia descendants with a more critical eye would be an interesting direction to take this essay. I worked to draw a parallel between the fictional scientist and the modern-day new media writer in the way that they must be cautious of their medium in their experimentation. I wanted to revise this essay because I believed that I had more to say in terms of the story of Frankenstein, especially in light of our later discussion of new media. I mostly worked on forwarding my ideas and expanding the range of my analysis for this project. I also worked on adding a critical voice to my essay by including Marshall McLuhan’s analysis on new media and its effect on the message of the work. Mostly, the revisions within the final essay reflect the forwarding of ideas that I attempted in reaching out beyond the original context of the novel. In essence, what I was attempting through this project was to extend my thinking beyond the novel itself and examine its message in the context of its changing medium.
Looking back on the “to-do list” that I created on the first day of class, a few of the areas that I wished to improve upon were exposure to different structures and forms of writing. I believe that I achieved this goal by attempting to go beyond the techniques that I might usually use in an essay. I experimented more with personal reflection through the first and third writing projects and with the electronic medium in my blog. I am also still working on sentence variety, complexity, and interest. We focused in class on varying sentence length, but I also want to work on varying phrases and clauses and the general structure of my sentences. In the coming semesters at Washington College I will continue to work on my “to-do list” through these changes and by gaining more experience in varying academic disciplines. Part of writing is opening oneself up to unexplored subject areas and gaining knowledge in a variety of fields in order to further one’s ability to critically analyze and respond to the world around him. Overall, a goal for me to keep in mind is to become more varied and well-rounded – both in my writing and my thinking.