Blog Reflection On The Appalachian Trail During Covid-19 Essay:

September 14th, 2022

As this was my first essay of the year, I have to say I was definitely shaking off the cobwebs in my brain when writing it. Like all essays, the one part of this that I found the most difficult was getting it started. Even just finding the perfect opening sentence was tough. Fortunately, after lots of brainstorming and thinking, I was able to find the perfect opener. From there I established the first paragraph, and then I was on a roll. Once the opening paragraph was done, the rest of the essay was actually pretty smooth. My first draft was a little bit longer than three pages as it was double spaced and written in MLA format. Once I had finished my first draft, I took it to Jacob so he could go over it, review it, and let me know what was good and what was needed to improve. Overall, he said the essay was pretty well written, however it needed a few things. First, he wanted me to add more quotes to the essay. In my first draft, I only had two quotes total. After Jacobs advice, I had much more than two. I chose the quotes from each person that I read about on Trail Journals. Second, Jacob advised me to go more in depth on the psychological aspect of the hikers on the trail at the time of Covid. He noticed that I was talking a lot about the hikers' experience and decisions, but he told me that I should dive in deeper and talk about the psychological parts and mindset of the hikers and what they were thinking when making their decisions. Using that advice, I dove deeper into that theme. Lastly, Jacob showed me how to do correct citations, as the ones I originally had were incorrect. After all of Jacobs' edits and reading over the essay to find grammatical mistakes several times, I was very happy with the essay that I submitted.