Slice of PIE

We were assigned to submit our final big paper for the semester for review through the tutoring program offered by the college.  I had never used a service like this, but was hopeful that it would help me to really improve my paper.  I have to say I was really disappointed with the experience.

Editing your paper can take it's toll, peer review can help avoid Jello brain!
G. Whittaker 10-2009

Typically when I write papers, I go through several drafts.  I start out by just writing.  Then I will move things around and reorganize the paper.  I'll move whole paragraphs around in the paper, and do quite a bit of rewriting.  I don't really think of this as different draft forms, but more as an evolving paper.

Revising is something that is very important to the writing process.  No one is ever going to write something perfectly the first time.  Writing doesn't happen that way.  We may have great ideas the first time, but they can always be refined.  There are always opportunities to make ideas clearer to the reader, and to check spelling and grammar in our work.  Sometimes we write something thinking it is fantastic, but once we look back at it we wonder how we ever wrote it.  There have certainly been times that I read over a sentence in my work that makes absolutely no sense.  Especially if I hot it in a rewriting and ended up fusing two sentences together.  As part of this process I usually as a family member to peer review for me, which helps immensely!  (Thanks mom!!!) Having a different point of view is extremely helpful because someone else can help catch mistakes that you don't, and they can point out areas where things are confusing, or awkward in your work.

Very pretty, but it's not PIE!
G. Whittaker 3-2010

Now, back to that online tutor review.  On the submission form there is a box where you can tell them specifically what you would like help on.  I asked that they look closely at my parenthetical citations, and make sure they were formatted correctly, and for input on how well my paper's paragraphs followed the PIE format.  My instructor reminded me of the PIE format on a previous paper and suggested I use this guide to help make sure that my work stayed on target.  I expected that it might take some time to hear back from the online tutor.  I heard back within an hour, and was very surprised.  I received an email that said:
" In the copy attached, I have noted corrections for your parenthetical cites and works cited page.  You have a really strong argument, although I am not familiar with the PIE format you mention.  Great job on this essay!."
 Really?  A tutor for an English 102 class that isn't familiar with the PIE form?  I might expect other students to not know it, (I had to look it up myself as a review when my instructor has mentioned it to me,) but the the tutor?  If you are not familiar with PIE, a good overview is available here.  The online tutor was a great help with the technical aspects of MLA.  For that I am very thankful, but those were the only comments in the attachment.  I would have really preferred to have more constructive criticism.  I am very glad that I submitted a partial draft to my instructor previously, and that I have my family reviewer(s) to help me out on this one!  Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the nice comments from the tutor, but they simply don't help me to improve my paper.

I plan on making the citation changes that the tutor indicated, as well as working on some structural and content comments that my instructor made on my skeletal draft.  I tried to keep those things in mind already while completing the paper, but will be rereading it again with those specific things in mind as well.