When I initially started planning and drafting this paper, I remember that effectively utilizing my sources was a point of difficulty for me. The direction I decided to take this paper, in support of Soylent, was not one that seemed to mesh very well with one of the required sources, my Favorite Meal Essay. The Favorite Meal Essay is at its core a celebration of indulgence and the cultural/familial significance food holds (at least this is generally where most people end up going with it, myself included). These concepts are pretty much the antithesis to the idea of Soylent. As my ideas developed, I realized that this tension could actually be incredibly useful to make my point. In the final body paragraph of my paper, I use this quote: “Although a bottle of Soylent is not the most appetizing thing in the world, In writing my Favorite Meal Essay I came to the realization that what exactly we are eating may not be very important. ‘. . . the reality of the situation is that taste or uniqueness or indulgence isn’t why I value the meal. Just like [my brother] Luis, the meals I value most are those that remind me of home. The relationships we create with family and friends hold places of deep importance in many of our lives, and food is often a way to remind us of that.’” I followed up that quotation with some explanation that led into my big point of the paragraph, which I discussed in greater detail in Learning Outcome 1. Although I feel as though I selected effective quotations for this paper and usually backed them up quite well, I think I fell a little bit short in terms of clearly introducing them. That above passage is a good example of the general style of introduction I used for almost every quote in the paper, and it certainly feels as though the quote is a bit untethered sometimes without explicit inclusion of something like “Referring to my father’s burgers in my Favorite Meal Essay, I wrote…” followed by the quotation. I selected this paper because I think it is the one that best showcases my revision process, but it was also a point of learning for me in regards to introducing quotations, and I think my subsequent papers improved on this.
