Unpacking Manuel’s Tavern: Lighted Goose Island Sign (FINAL DRAFT)

I felt as if I went on a completely different direction in the final draft of Unpacking Manuel’s Tavern Project. As I was writing my first draft, I was completely lost as to what the content would be and how to tie it together to Manuel’s Tavern.I wanted people to get something meaningful from this piece and I really felt that I learned the value of writing as a process. I solely thought that our project would be on the piece that we selected, yet I learned throughout the process that the objects we chose were merely additional pieces to the bigger picture. I believe that I improved on a variety of things from properly citing my sources to just structuring my arguments.

I stayed heavily on the surface in my first draft because I was practically regurgitating facts from articles and news sites, which made the project appear more like a research paper than an artistic and analytical piece of writing. I knew that I had to delve deeper as I write the final draft because I really wanted to make more of a personal connection in my piece. I ended it with a statement that ties together Goose island, Manuel’s Tavern and also ourselves as human beings. From meeting Professor Morgen to reading commentary from my classmates, I had a much clearer idea about how I wanted to structure my piece as well as the message that I wanted to relay to my audience. This ties to the importance of collaboration and getting input from someone other than yourself. I completely abandoned my first approach and took on something completely different with some of the same facts that ties to form a much more significant message.