The first step of project 3 was to make an outline of how my paper was going to look. That outline is a place that contains my thesis and topic sentences. From there, I am able to find the best quotes from sources that best support my thesis statement and topic sentences. For example, in my first body paragraph my topic sentence touches on how digital technology takes away our capacity to pay attention to tasks that require effort. From there, I looked through my underlined sections from my chosen source, “Is Google Making Us Stupid.” From there, the best passage that furthered my argument stated in my topic sentence is the following, “And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a jet ski” (2). This passage demonstrates how the internet is decreasing Carr’s ability to concentrate. Carr is no longer in a sea of words because the internet no longer allows him to focus on the things that require attention. In the past, I would jump to my next quote from one of my classmates and demonstrate how it also shows a theme that helps my ideas raised in my topic sentence. However, Professor Miller commented about how that often led to my paragraphs being written in a listy format. Instead, in this project, I used the barclays format to link different ideas to one another. For example, I would write the following, “These ideas from Carr are similar to those of Thurmond’s; they both demonstrate a limited capacity to concentrate due to digital technology’s efficiency.” This way of linking Thurmond’s ideas to Carr’s is a better transition between thoughts without writing in a bullet point format.
