After the discussion of my paper last Thursday, I realized just how much my topic has changed since the beginning of the quarter. Indeed, while I’m still morbidly intrigued by human sacrifice, I find myself more drawn to why the Spaniards were so focused on Aztec religion more than anything else. Thus, one of the most important revisions I realized I had to make was to change my introduction. When I first began the paper, I mainly reused what I had from my prospectus as my introduction, along with a few minor changes. However, as I developed my ideas more and more, I realized that this was inadequate since my argument had drastically changed since I had started. However, I do think it was a good idea to begin with the introduction, since this at least guided my efforts as I was writing. Nevertheless, towards the end it was imperative to change this section since it did not give the reader a correct impression of what I intended to analyze in my paper.
Additionally, I found it very helpful to prepare oral presentations on other people’s work since it forced me to consider what others might be thinking when they read my own paper. Once I had looked at other work with a critical eye, I realized that one of the most important things to do was to make sure every piece of evidence I used was relevant and connected to the argument I was trying to make. When I had started writing my paper, I tried to get all the information I had accumulated on paper, which inevitably led to too many superfluous details being included. Thus, it became evident to me that any paper requires repeated revision since ideas that could once seem central to an argument become tangential.
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