Reflective Essay

When I was signing up for English this winter, I truly was worried about taking English 102. The main reason being was that the word “research” was in the title. The last time I took a class based off research was my junior year in high school, that year was spent writing paper after paper and spending lots of time in the library after school. I thought to myself if I spent that much time in high school working on papers, how much time am I going to spend in college writing papers? However, when I got to class the first day and heard it was about technology I was a little relieved. To me there is nothing worse than writing a lengthy paper on a topic that is uninteresting to you. I feel that English 101 prepared me for English 102, it taught me the importance of keeping the portfolio goals in mind when writing my essays.
I feel like writing blogs each week was the perfect outline for the papers we had assigned during class. Our blogs were something I could look back on when I got stuck writing or needed more ideas. In one of my blogs I wrote, “It’s easier to have already written about a topic instead of just reading a book and going straight into a formal essay.” I still feel this is true, it is much easier when you already have your ideas written down compared to just writing a essay off of the many ideas in your head. As the blogs continued I felt it was important to write how I felt but to also keep the goals fresh in my mind.
One goal that I thought I used a lot not only in my blogs but also in my essays was “go beyond summary to engage texts through analysis, interpretation, and critical inquiry.” To me this goal means that when you put a direct quote in your essay or even talk about a source, you put in your own meaning to what the author is saying. Also, you use that quote to strengthen a opinion you already mentioned in your paper. For example I wrote, “‘Science has now known sin,’ (Vonnegut 17). I feel like Vonnegut says this because after the atomic bomb is when questions starting raising about what technology can really do to our lives.” Before I quoted Vonnegut I talked about how I thought before the atomic bomb science and new technology was looked at as positives things. I used the quote to get support from my source but than I also interpreted it to my own meaning.
I kept in mind the importance of this goal when I started writing my research paper. When I looked for sources, I looked for ones that would strengthen my opinion and also sources that I could formulate my own opinion about. However, before I could start looking for sources I needed to figure out which topic I wanted to write about. I knew my paper would not be any good if it wasn’t on a topic that I am interested in, so therefore because of my own beliefs I chose gun control. It was easy to find sources dealing with this, however, it was hard to find books that didn’t all say the same thing.
I chose to write about gun control because I feel like America has become a more violent place. Whenever I hear stories on the news about domestic violence or even school shootings, I wonder is there even a point to guns? I wanted to research if taken guns out of civilian’s hands would have any affect on the violence level.
The first point I tried to show in my essay is the violence that guns do cause. I used statistics right away to show that guns are a problem. Next, I went onto talking just about suicide and gun accidents. I did this to show the readers what guns are capable of and how they are being used. I felt that if the readers could see the damage that guns cause they could understand my opinion better. However, I felt I did a good job in those paragraphs so that the reader could formulate their own opinion.
One concern that I had with my research paper was how to make it not should like a persuasive essay. I did not want my paper to try to convince someone that they should be for gun control just because I am. I want my paper to be on how guns make America a more violent place and if taken guns out of the picture would make it less violent, I feel at times my controlling purpose didn’t always shine through and that worried me. Therefore, I brought up the second point in my essay and that was the question if guns are what is violent or is it the criminal using the gun? I felt like this question brought my paper to a higher level of thinking. This question made me think more critically about the people who are using guns violently, having my own questions about gun control made researching the topic more interesting.
After I finished my first draft of my research paper I felt as though I had a solid paper to give to the students in my class that were editing it. However, after conferences I learned that my paper wasn’t bad it just wasn’t up to academic university standards. I learned from my conference that I made my point that guns are violent now I need to go more critically into the topic and look into why nothing is being done. With that in mind I went back through my sources and looked to see if they had any information. I feel like adding that into my paper did improve it because it allowed me to make an analysis about my own topic.
From my rough draft to my final draft I made the addition of comparing my sources. I did this for the main purpose of the goal “use key terms, distinctions, or concepts from sources to interpret, expand, and/or critique key terms, distinctions, or concepts from other sources.” I also did this because before I started editing my rough draft I looked back throughout the essays we wrote over the course of semester and realized every essay was comparing two or more authors. I thought that by mentioning one thing each author said that related to the other sources met this goal. It also helped to show the reasoning behind my opinion throughout my paper.
Overall, writing my research paper was not as bad as I expected it to be but it did take a lot of work. The steps that I made throughout writing my paper are steps that I can use when writing my next research paper because it they helped me be more efficient. I feel that if I didn’t have my blogs to look back on when writing my paper it would have been a lot more difficult because those papers set up the style in which I wanted my research paper to follow. Also, I realized the importance of having good reliable sources and how it can strengthen your paper. I thought that my opinion was more powerful when I had credible authors that agreed and direct quotes that showed they agreed.
Overall, I do feel like English 102 has made me a better writer. Throughout all the practice we had up until our research paper we were taught how to interpret and compare sources, strengthen and clarify our controlling purpose, acknowledge the stakeholders in our paper, and learn expand our ideas through direct quotes. I feel that all this work lead me to write my research paper in the way that I did and will help me in the future to be a better writer. I now believe when I sign up for classes next I will not be as worried when I see the word “research” in the course title.