October 25, 2022
After our class discussion of thesis statements, I decided to go back and evaluate thesis statements that I have written in various classes.
In high school, I remember learning about thesis statements as a very structured thing. My teachers were very strict on having the same formula for each one. Part of that was because of the short time allotted for standardized testing, but the other part was because it was the easy way. Looking back at my old thesis statements, they were all painfully similar.
Here are a couple of examples from my high school essays :
"Some people may believe that Paine’s rose-colored glasses look at the United States still holds true today, however, there are still injustices that require citizen intervention towards the government and society and the United States today is very much split rather than in unison; therefore, Paine’s characterization of America does not hold true in modern society."While it worked at the time, I believe it to be too elementary for college works and the formula is boring. I like the complex sentence structure, but if you read multiple essays from the same person and the thesis is always structured like that it will be very redundant.
In college, I have gone more towards writing a provable claim rather than writing a sentence from a formula. I have found this to be very successful and it has kept me on track in my essays.
Here are a couple of examples of my thesis from college essays :
"Through incorporation of complex character relationships, Wright breaks down the selfishness and racism that has been created by a capitalistic society in America. In elaborating on how capitalism creates discrimination, Wright constructs “Long Black Song” as a political commentary on how capitalism has failed and created an unfair economic and political system rooted in hatred."
"In order for the United States to properly rehabilitate criminals in their criminal justice system so that they can return to society, prisons need to be reformed internally with new systems that promote prisoner rights, allowing for a less toxic living environment for incarcerated individuals."
It was interesting because after we looked at the thesis statement handout I was surprised to see that thesis statements could be more than just one sentence. This was shocking to me and proved that old habits die hard. I'll definitely have to do more research regarding thesis statements and I'm interested to see how the evolution of my thesis statement will continue.
I don't really know what other form of media to put in this boring post about thesis statements, so enjoy a picture of my cat!