This essay was one of the more difficult papers I have completed for this course thus far. I believe it is because I came from a point in high school where I had never revised any of my essays, instead I would feel confident in my first draft and submit it right away. The exploratory essay was different than any other paper I’d ever written in many ways: I began to change my opinions about the stories as we learned more and more in the class thus my essay would change as well, making it difficult for me to stick to my original draft. I read Oates’ story with the impression that the entire end of the story was a real experience and that Connie was just put in an unfortunate situation. However, as we moved onto Lecture IV, I changed my mind and was convinced that it was a dream. I was very hesitant to change my essay and was afraid that all of my interpretations were wrong. 

After the midterm conferences I was much more confident in my ideas. I found the peer review sessions extremely helpful for this essay, especially when we were assigned to people writing about the same stories because I think a lot of people were confused about the same things that I was. By the time I had finished my fourth draft, I was finally convinced that I had completed the essay to the best of my ability. I think that my claims about the dream aspect of the story all had Freudian quotes that supported them and contributed to the explanation of them. My thesis statement was read out loud to the class and a lot of people said things that helped me condense it and get straight to the point, which is something I usually struggle with in writing. Having everyone give their opinions on it, especially people who are studying the same things and using the same story as me, really helped me think about my essay as a whole and see how I could condense it and make it sound less wordy. I think that this is one of my better essays for many reasons; I think that my first essays were written well but were missing the connection between the text and my claims and I tried very hard on this paper to incorporate only quotes that had a clear connection and support to my claim.