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John Trevino

Mrs. Briones

English 1302-261

May 6, 2024

Reflection Final

This course has helped me in many ways to do proper academic research when it comes to

writing papers or anything like that. Before this class I had an idea how to do proper research but

after taking this class and having to go through 10 peer review articles and looking through

everything, I have a better understanding and grasp on how to do it and an activity we did in

class that also helped me was when we did court day. Each group was given a letter A or B

envelope but letter A obviously got the better topic and B got a topic that went against A, even

though that we had to do more research and fight and come up with for structured argument, A

would always win the popular vote, and I find that fascinating because we put a lot of research

into that activity even if it was only 20 minutes, me and my group and all of the other B tried

their best. But during this class it has helped me a lot to do proper research and write academic

research.

In this course, when it comes to writing and how to write a better and more well thought out

essay, I have learned a lot. Beforehand I would kind of just wing it and hope for the best but for

this course I couldn’t do that so I really had to sit down and read everything and write about it

and I would have a sheet of paper with me and jot down little ideas that I have for what I should

add into the essay, I feel like throughout essay one, two, and three I have improved in my writing

skills in many ways, from having better openings, better structured paragraphs and body’s, all the
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way down to having a more well thought out conclusion and I just feel more confident when it

comes to my writing skills. I've always struggled in writing, but I feel like over this semester I

have gotten better at writing due to this class and I’ll just get better and better with time.

So, when it came to revising my essays, I always looked at the instructor’s feedback or the peer

reviews that we did during class. For example, for the instructor feedback it said that I forgot to

put work cited as my title for the works cited page I went back and I quickly fixed it, another

thing I did was for when I quoted the authors in multiple parts of the essay I did not write the

author's name in one of them and two of the quotes I put(1 out of 18) but it's supposed to be just

the (author's name out of 1) I went back and fixed it overall I didn't have to go back and fix too

much but with the little bit of instructor feedback that I did get it was a great help for the overall

conclusion of my essay and made the essay better and stronger.

I feel like the most challenging part of revising the research genre was not being able to use first

person in any way shape or form, I found a difficult in some places like in my fifth paragraph I

wanted to write about a personal experience that happened to me when I was young because I

wrote about ADHD and I do have ADHD but I had to go through some obstacles because I

wasn't allowed to use first person. But I feel like this was very helping in a way because this got

me to use my brain more and to think of alternative ways instead of using first person, for

example I said that there is a story about a boy and I narrated the boys whole story without using

first person or anything like that, obviously this boy is me but I was able to work around the

obstacle and give a well thought out story without breaking any of the rules that were set. And
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like I said it wasn’t easy, but I feel like this made me a better writer at the end of the day because

not using first person is hard and I was ably to do it.

When I went to go explain about the annotated bibliography, literature genre, and research genre

I did find it a little tricky because I didn't really know how to put it into words, I knew what I had

to do but being able to put it into words for someone who never studied our subject or doesn't

understand what we are doing in the class was very challenging so I contacted a friend in the

class and ask them what they wrote hearing their idea I was able to get an idea of my own of

what to write about but I still found it tricky because even with my friends explanation I was still

a little confused but overall I was able to get my narrative straight and to the point for someone

who might not understand what an annotated bibliography literature genre and research genre is.

I think the hardest part about this course was all the writing I had to do, yes I know this is an

English class and writing was to be expected but throughout my life of being in school I've never

had to write as much as I’ve had for this class, it was challenging in some parts because I would

have writer's block and not know what to say for days, when I wrote essay one it was challenging

because there were moments that I didn't know what to say or add to the essay to make it more

engaging or add more research but I feel like by the end of essay 2 and mostly 3 I've gotten a

better understanding and grip into writing all because of this course. Another difficulty I found in

this course was reading because of my ADHD, I find it hard to focus on something for a long

period of time so having to read articles that were 10 to 20 pages long was very difficult to me at

the beginning, there would even be moments that I just stopped or wanted to quit but I persisted

and kept going and even right now I'm not the biggest fan of reading but I can appreciate what
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the author's wrote about and I can especially appreciate this course for helping me be able to read

better and write better.

I think the best strength I had when it came to this course was my ability to write, I know the last

paragraph I just talked about how I struggled in writing and I do struggle in writing but once I

start writing it's kind of hard to make me stop, once I have my mind set on something I will keep

going at it until I am finished. I did that a lot for these essays I would sit down start writing and

once I started I could not stop and I felt that was very helpful and a lot of situations, for example

essay 3, it was a few days before it was due and I wasn't done with paragraph four and five,

worried I sat down and took a moment to think of ideas what to write about and once I got the

ideas I started writing for a solid 2 hours straight I took no breaks I just kept writing and by the

end of the day when I submitted it I was very nervous because I didn’t know what kind of grade I

would get. But when I got my grade back it was a 98, I feel very accomplished when I saw that

grade because I was worried at the beginning, but I really do think because of me being able to

just write and keep going helped me a lot for this essay.

Throughout this course it has prepared me in a lot of ways for future classes where I need to

write long and tedious essays and at the beginning of this course I probably would have said no I

am not prepared in any way shape or form but by the end of this semester I can confidently say I

am pretty prepared to be part of the academic research community I feel like this course really

opened my eyes and to see a part of me that I didn't even know was there how I'm able to write

and actually liked writing. This whole course has been an amazing learning experience and I'm
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very happy that I am more confident and more reassured of my writing and reading skills for the

future.