Starting out and wrapping it up

For today's reading, the focus was mainly on learning how to improve our writing with the beginning and ending of our essays. This was perfect timing to read something like this because I have really been struggling with coming up with a good beginning and end. As we went through in class reading our first and second drafts with our peers, I was told that I mainly needed to work on two things: grabbing the readers attention from the beginning, and making my essay coming to a closing without being too abrupt.
I was able to go through what is necessary in both an intoduction and a conclusion and make sure that I knew what I needed in my paper still. I learned that in an introduction, it is necessary to include the main idea of the topic, the thesis, background information, and grab the reader's interest somehow. I had thought about whether to begin with a question or not. I like the idea of beginning with a quote but I feel my paper already has a lot of quotes in it. I also found out those elements necessary for a good conclusion. It is very much like introducing everything, but in a more repetitive format. It is making sure the reader knows the main topics, the overal thesis, and the importance of the paper. If one cannot see from the conclusion why the paper was important- the paper is a failure.
Personally, I always have trouble coming up with a thesis. I read through my paper and could not figure out for myself which sentence was my thesis. It all sort of merged together. I would like to work on going through and better organizing my ideas in a format that anyone could read my introduction or conclusion and see my overall thesis.