Santos 1

Lovella Santos

Instructor Judith McCann

English 1302.203

27 March 2022

Essay 2 Reflection Essay

The second essay was a challenging essay since I had to compare and contrast on a topic

in which I talked about bipolar disorder. The hard part was not the compare and contrast part, but

rather the part in which I had to make the authors of my peer reviews have a conversation. Now

in essay 1 I made an experiment on sleeping early and what benefits I received on sleeping early.

I have never mentioned this before but I have Bipolar disorder and the lack of sleep is one of its

side effects. Now in essay 2 if i remember correctly it's on the third paragraph I talk about how

the lack of sleep affects adolescents with bipolar disorder. This helped me because it made my

essay a lot easier since I had to explain how lack of sleep affects adolescents. All I had to do was

just mention what I go through in this essay.

Well what i learned in essay 1 that i knew that i could not do again was use personal

pronouns. Personal pronouns were hard in essay 1 since the essay was based on an experiment

based on myself. It may sound weird that thanks to this essay I learned to not use personal

pronouns. One being that it was a compare and contrast essay and second being that it had to be a

conversation with the authors of my peer reviewed articles. And lastly because I wanted to add

my own opinions on the topic which I couldn't do. Another thing is that I wanted to include what

I learned in my psychology class to help my essay sound better but I soon remembered that I had

to cite it and I soon changed my mind because I did not have the resources I only had my brain in

which I kept the information at.

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I learned/knew that bipolar disorder has many types in which they have different

symptoms and effects that affect anyone. I also learned that a high percentage of adolescents and

young adults are the ones who are affected by this disorder more. Now I do not have a class in

which this would help me but if I ever have one I will use this essay to help me out. Not to

mention I also learned how to create an annotated bibliography which was hard to make because

it was my first time doing such a thing. One day in my future college/university life I will have to

make another annotated bibliography and thanks to this class I will know how to make one.

The comments I received in my first essay were all about grammar; they believed that

grammar was one of my greatest weaknesses and as for my strengths they would mention that I

go straight to the point. And as for essay 2 my peers mentioned that my straight to the point kind

of essay is one of my greatest weaknesses and they asked for elaboration and detail. As for my

strengths they mentioned that I have strong ideas all I have to do is elaborate to make them

stronger. In all honesty, my strengths and weaknesses are always changing so I do not have a

clear idea on how they are the same but for sure they are different from my 1st and from my past

class in 1301.

In essay 1 the comments I received from my instructor were “Content/ideas clear and

present for the reader. Excellent in-text citation of your personal findings. Consider

implementing your citation in the work cited page in the future.” And as for this essay I believe I

will receive something similar except for the last two sentences but for sure I will get a small

comment on something I did wrong in this essay.

I think the most challenging aspect of this essay will be the writing part. I struggle with

writer's block a lot. It is a habit of mine to always go blank and run out of ideas in an essay. For
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instance, in essay 1 i struggled a lot since i had to make it based on a personal experiment. It was

hard because I had to make my point by not using personal pronouns and I believe that was the

hard part which made me go blank throughout my essay. The least challenging part of this course

I believe to be the brain storming. I find it to be fun because there are tons of topics to talk about

in an essay, not to mention it is easy.