Melissa Barry
EN11 Section CO, Fall 2014
Instructor: E. Hilts
Wallace Essay: Cover Memo
October 16, 2014
They Say/I Say has truly been beneficial in the process of rewriting my Wallace essay. I utilized the chapter on agreeing and disagreeing to define my stance on Wallace’s opinion on selfcenteredness. I also realized that my essay did not have a developed introduction, thesis, or conclusion. I found it much easier to write an introductory paragraph, a thesis, and a conclusion after rereading the contents of my essay. I did not change my citations because I was taught to cite paraphrased sentences as well as direct quotes. I felt as if my summary was sufficient after I took out the part about the fish and I like how I tied in Not For Ourselves Alone.
Melissa Barry
EN11 Section CO, Fall 2014
Instructor: E. Hilts
Wallace Essay: Draft One Revision
October 16, 2014 Wallace vs. Not For Ourselves Alone *We as humans are not aware of our surroundings unless they pertain directly to us.*
(makes you want to read more) It is a daily cycle, starting with our morning routines and ending when we go to bed at night. Think about it: we wake up thinking about what we can help ourselves to for breakfast, if the water in our shower is warm enough, and how inconvenienced we are and how late we will be because of the traffic on the way to work. In David Foster
Wallace’s essay David Foster Wallace on Life and Work, the author describes how selfcentered the human race is but he also explains how we can change our way of thinking. According to
David Foster Wallace, thinking different incites empathy, which makes us better and more wellrounded people.
Wallace goes on to say that the most obvious realities are the hardest to talk about
(Wallace 1). He discusses our “default settings” as humans and how we are programmed to believe that each of us individually think that we are the center of the universe. Humans think in terms of themselves. That is how a person is programmed, so to speak, since the day that he or she is born. I agree that humans are selfcentered because my experience working with infants.
Even at the age of eight months, it is clear that children know how to get someone’s attention.
Someone who is not selfcentered is deemed by society to be welladjusted, and rightly so.
Someone who is welladjusted has adjusted themselves to defy his or her own default settings and be free. (+) (what does it mean to be free?)
Wallace describes his college education and how it has changed his thinking process. He says that he overthinks and overanalyzes so much that he cannot enjoy whatever he is analyzing in its simplicity. He suggests that a liberal arts college education does not teach you how to think, it helps you learn how to think by being conscious and aware of what’s going on in class instead of succumbing to the neverending and sometimes more interesting litany of thoughts going through one’s head. Wallace brings up the statistic of adults who commit suicide. (?) (too sudden and abrupt, transition better) Those who choose to commit suicide with guns pull the trigger towards their brains, which is not a coincidence. They have already died in their minds because they never learned how to think. The author defines freedom and lays out some very key points that constitute true independence: attention, awareness, discipline, effort, truly caring about other people, and sacrificing for other people. (*) (good explanation of freedom, but maybe it should be placed earlier into the essay when you mention freedom in the previous paragraph) Wallace’s point is that the default process and life in general can be changed if one just chooses what to focus on. It is normal for humans to be in a crowd or at the supermarket or commuting home from work or waiting on line and only be thinking about themselves. Wallace pushes his audience to consider someone else’s point of view or someone
