Nishiyama 1

Regina Nishiyama

Dr. W Nolen

English 1302

24 April 2022

Reflective Essay

John Dewey once said, “we don’t learn from experience we learn from reflection of

experience” (1933) meaning that we cannot grow from merely doing something, we need to be

able to look back on what we did and meditate on how it has helped us grow. The purpose of

reflection is to grow and learn from what you did in the past in order to do better in the future. It

is important to reflect on my past essays in order to become a better writer on my present and

future essays. Being able to take in the comments left by my professor, writing center, and peers

on my last two essays helps me understand what I can do better and what I have been able to do

successfully. As well as reflecting on the assignments done during the process of essay three and

the assignments before those, helps me reflect on my work and how I can apply it to my future

writing. The purpose of this paper is to reflect on essays 1 and 2 and see what skills were

applicable to this essay and which ones were not, along with understanding how this third essay

will apply to future classes and what parts of it are not helpful in future endeavors, the process of

creating an argument strengthening my writing as well as the comments from my peers and

professor will also be discussed in order to get a good well rounded view of my progress and my

weaknesses.

The purpose of essay one was a steppingstone towards the direction of essay three. This

essay entailed creating my own research question and then creating an experiment to help me
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answer the question and writing a detailed research paper including two sources to help make my

experiment more credible. Being able to find multiple peer-reviewed sources was a major

responsibility of essay 3, but because I had already been exposed to this task in essay 1, I was

better prepared; I was already familiar with TAMIU Library to be able to find thousands of

sources I could use, and I was familiar with what parts of these articles would be most useful to

my argument. On the other hand, I did not need to create my own experiment for essay 3 like I

did in essay 1, so I did not apply any of these skills to this paper.

Similarly, in essay 2, it was required to find multiple peer-reviewed sources to aid in

understanding the topic at hand. This further helped me exercise my ability to find sources that

would aid my argument and helped my reading and interpretation skills when reading through all

these articles to see what information could be useful to my paper. On the other hand, this paper

required me to find sources that covered every viewpoint on the topic, but in essay 3 it was more

important to find views that helped with my argument. So being able to look at all the sides of a

topic was not something I used in essay 3 that I learned in essay 2. Although it was important to

keep in mind any counterarguments that could be used against my argument in essay 3, I did not

need to worry as much about finding sources from these differing viewpoints as I did in essay 2.

Just like the two aforementioned essays, essay 3 has its practical and impractical sides.

Creating a well-rounded argument using peer-reviewed sources can be applicable to must

courses at TAMIU including higher level English courses, government and history papers, and

even Theater critique papers. But in my case, my education plan only requires me to take these

courses as basic entry level classes, which will only affect me for a semester or two; since I am

in the nursing program, my path requires me to take science and math classes that will most

likely not require me to create many arguments. Although I will need to use peer-reviewed
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sources throughout my time at TAMIU, it will most likely not be writing any more

argumentative research papers after this class.

Moving on, the goal of this essay was to create a well-supported argument that would

persuade readers of your stance. A strong argument entails constructing a claim, gathering

evidence and research, understanding the opposing viewpoint, presenting the aforementioned,

and finally restating your position. It is important to create a solid argument including all of the

criteria in order to be established as a more credible writer. By actively exercising this skill and

making sure I hit all the marks, I can increase my ability as a writer for people to take me

seriously. For example, if I were to create an argument without stating any evidence, or

mentioning the opposite side, readers would think I am simply stating an opinion and not

consider any of my ideas, but if I were to create an argument including multiple peer-reviewed

sources, a solid counterargument, and a well written essay that displays all the aspects of my

argument, readers would be more likely to side with me.

Regarding my peers’ comments and reviews on my first and second draft of this last

essay, they did not provide much insight or help when developing this paper. The first draft of

my essay was not even reviewed by my peers and no comments were left to guide me when

writing the second draft. Moving on, I did get two peers to comment on my second draft, but all

their input was very superficial and vague. For example, one peer merely stated, “very good

intro” (Chaires 1), before moving on to highlight all my sources, and leave no input on whether

they were helpful towards my argument. The second peer only provided grammatical support

and left no notes on the actual content of my paper. Having noted that no peer was able to

provide me with much critical review, there is no way for me to measure if my strengths and

weaknesses from the previous essays have changed or stayed the same.
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Although my peers’ reviews were not helpful during the process of this essay, my

professor was able to provide more in-depth analysis of my past essays that were considered

during the writing process. In both my first and second essay, my professor stated that I needed

more background or context on the topic of my essay before introducing my thesis (Nolen, 1); so

this time around I made sure to introduce the topic of social media, provide a solid definition of

the term to help familiarize readers, and provided evidence of why this topic is so relevant before

my thesis statement, so I am hoping this comment about including more background does not

appear in the grading of my last essay. One comment that I believe will stay the same in this

essay is that my thesis statement needs work. I feel I have not had enough practice when it comes

to developing a solid thesis for research papers, so I assume that your critique will be the same.

Each time I write my thesis statement, I believe that it is solid and entails all the parts of my

essay, however, each of my professor’s comments have said that the thesis is too vague or not

very well written, so I believe that this thesis statement will gain criticism as well.

Overall, I would say this essay was straightforward in terms of what the rubric required.

All we needed to do was create an argument using 8 peer-reviewed sources, that would support

our claim, simple right? I would argue that the only simple part about this essay was creating the

claim of the argument; since my topic was relevant, and most of the community could agree that

social media has its downfalls, it was not difficult to make the claim that social media has a

negative impact on the youth, and it was also easy to come up with reasons behind this claim

such as mental health problems and lack of sleep. On the other hand, because the paper required

eight different sources to be included throughout the paper, it took a lot of reading, analyzing,

and tweaking to be able to find sources that would aid my argument the best. You cannot always

control what you want others to say, and it is even harder to be able to find sources that fit your
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paper exactly, so it was important to be able to find sources that were similar to my claim, and

then use some of their statements to fit mine.

In the end, essay three seemed to be the easiest to develop out of all three essays. I had

already gained knowledge and skills from the previous two essays that made me stronger and

more competent writer during the process of essay three. Just like the past two essays, the

development of this essay can be very useful for my future courses that require me to create

argumentative essays; it is important to be able to create a solid argument in order to gain more

credit as a writer and persuade your audience no matter the topic. As for my peers’ relevance to

the development of my essay, there was none. The reviews left by my peers seemed to be rushed

and superficial which provided no help to me when trying to understand if my argument was

strong enough for the rubric of this essay. On the other hand, I took into consideration the

comments left by my professor and hope that I was able to change his comment about the lack of

background in my essays. And although I think I did a decent job when writing my thesis

statement in this essay, I believe his critique of my thesis will be the same as the lasts. And

lastly, it is easy to create an argument with a solid claim but finding the right evidence to

persuade your audience will always be a struggle.