This assignment was the first college essay I had to turn in, which was nerve wrecking. I felt lost, since it was an open question I felt like I needed structure to guide me. I wrote my essay about the message I felt "The Cold Equation" and "Hinterland" had in common. I began to go over the notes I took on each story and put them in a list, comparing and contrasting the stories. This allowed me to have a clear list of points I wanted to base my essay on, which facilitated the start of the assignment. 

I planned my thesis to help me structure my essay on to communicate my idea.

"In this essay, I’ll be comparing “The Cold Equation” by Tom Godwin and “Hinterland” by William Gibson. I’ll be analyzing how both authors touch upon the morals and feelings of the characters, and I’ll be connecting the stories to real life." 

After all the analyzing of the stories I saw a common ground of how human morals influence decisions. I wrote my essay around that point. I know it was vague, which later I would encounter problems.

My trouble came when I was trying to incorporate outside sources to the essay to connect to the stories. I began to realize that some of the quotes were forced onto the essay. 

"This issue is seen in “The Cold Equation” since there’s a dilemma of whose death provokes least casualty. In his story, Godwin uses pathos so the reader connects to him, emphasizing the internal battle Barton is dealing with. Barton is a pilot of an Emergency Dispatch Ship (EDS) he is faced with an unwanted circumstance when he finds Marilyn, a stowaway. Barton’s orders are to execute stowaways, but after interacting with her and learning her reasons he is hesitant to kill her. Barton realizes she isn’t trying to cause harm, which only makes the situation more difficult. In “The Cold Equation” Barton’s EDS has limited fuel to deliver medicine to six men. Godwin mentions Marylin as “x, the unwanted factor in a cold equation.” (Godwin). This quote is significant because in a carefully calculated equation to get Barton from point A to point B she was unaccounted for and the fuel isn’t enough, meaning she had to be removed from the ship for Barton to finish his mission. As James Gunn mentions in the article “There is No Such Thing as Science Fiction”, anyone who thinks “The pilot should have found a way to sacrifice himself for the girl…isn’t reading the story correctly.” (Vint and Bould 2009). I read Gunn’s stance and noticed there’s not always a successful conclusion in life, the decision between the life of one person compared to the six men although difficult, it shouldn’t be much of a question."

This body paragraph was meant to elaborate on the human nature of people. The quote highlighted in yellow was the point I was aiming for. It was followed by my analysis in orange, which proves my point about connecting the story to the real world. The part I could have improved on was the quote I highlighted in pink. It seemed forced once I reread my essay. I wanted to include it because the outside sources are important, but I can see it affected what I wanted to communicate. 

I worked on finding concrete evidence that supports and fortifies my argument. Rather than try to include any evidence that I consider "good". I plan to work on this by using my thesis and proving my argument through quotes that only strengthen my thesis. I was able to use the articles and the short stories to prove my point about morals and the good in human nature. After looking over my draft I was able to make changes on the final draft regard quotes and the way I connected them to my thesis.