I received a lot of good feedback from my peers and I am very thankful for their help. After my first draft, one of the biggest aspects that my paper was missing was my own perspective. I wrote about Dweck’s and Lukianoff and Haidt’s points and the effect they can have on society today but I did not clarify what my perspective exactly was in relation to that point. Upon this feedback, I wrote a paragraph that discusses where I stand on some of the major aspects of both writings and added a sentence into my thesis to introduce my ideas. I would say my perspective is that using the concepts presented in these articles would be massively beneficial to our society, but we should not completely denounce things like microaggressions for it has caused us to think more about the words we use and the effect of those words.

I also worked on strengthening my ideas that surround my quotes. Specifically, in my paragraph that discussed division in America and the occurrence of affective partisan polarization, Alex commented, “How does this political divide and tension relate to the effects on learning that you’re trying to talk about?” I realized that I did not directly connect this phrase to Dweck and simply added a question that transfers into Dweck’s quote more clearly: “The result of this is two parties constantly demonizing and scrutinizing each other to make themselves look better, and in turn, causing any sort of political compromise to be harder to achieve. But how does this connect to Dweck and the idea of a fixed mindset?”

I believe I work best with Dweck’s ideas as a supporting foundation for the more complex ideas presented by Lukianoff and Haidt. Even though her research has been mainly with younger students, I find so many connections to concepts like division in her work. The two biggest things for me to work on came from Alex’s comments on how I need to talk more about the benefits of a growth mindset rather than the pitfalls of a fixed mindset. And structuring my essay to be a little more concise. Alex wrote, “The paragraphs seem very long and can be overwhelming for the reader.” After rereading my essay, I noticed this as well and made an effort to make my paragraphs more direct while keeping the substance of what I am trying to say.

These comments have given me much to work on and are certainly increasing the quality of my essay.