Post 11: Five Paragraph Essays

In Bernoff's blog, he gives a lot of information concerning the "five paragraph essay structure," that most students are used to abiding by. In his blog, he gives many tips and techniques that will allow a student to break past this mindset and be capable of upholding their essays to the standards of their professor. In their blog, they bring up techniques that help when trying to avoid limiting an essay with the old habit of including only five paragraphs. In my current Doc2, I have luckily avoided sticking to this method of structuring my paper. However, I  believe the introduction and conclusion of my essay could use more development, as they do not completely fulfill the direction I'm intending to go for. As Bernoff puts it, "The whole point of the opening paragraph is to tell people what's coming," and mine could be revised in a way that emphasizes the thesis more throughout it. 

    With my conclusion, I am notices that it does exactly what Bernoff mentions in his blog when discussing the issues that students have when concluding their writing, which is that, "They tend to write, 'As I said, blah blah blah' which is dull and repetitive." The last paragraph could use structural changes that focus less on what has already been discussed, and more about what the reader should think of afterwards. Including some information concerning how to get started with my major would definitely be more intriguing than just summarizing what I've already said. Lynch's essay gives good insight into making essays less restrictive, which I think I think is very relevant to the issue I have with writing in general. He mentions, "it’s not as if the personal essay and the school essay are diametrically opposed: the former can lead to the latter in interesting and compelling ways." I think this way of thinking would improve parts of my essay to feel more communicative with the audience, considering my essay is meant to be about my major. A balance between this and a more strict approach to something like my introduction or conclusion is what I believe would be the most suitable for improving the essay as a whole.