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Cynthia Moreno

Mrs. McCann

English 1302.201

18 February 2022

Essay One Reflection

This first essay of the semester was a challenge, to say the least. There were a lot of

things that made writing the essay a lot more difficult than it should have been. One of those

things was the format that it was written in. Usually, a research paper is written in APA format.

However, this essay had to be written in MLA format. There were no headings allowed, which

made it harder to separate the essay into parts such as the research part, analysis part, etc. It also

made it a challenge to guide the reader through the experiment.

Although I am not proud of what I wrote, I am of myself for being able to complete the

essay. The skills that I was able to develop in writing during the English 1301 were one of the

only things that were useful while writing the essay. Since the first essay was a research paper

and it was something that was not assigned during English 1302, coming up with ideas to write

about and then having to follow them in order to write the essay was very challenging, and

maybe even the most challenging part.

If a student had no help from their instructors, they’d have a lot of difficulty being able to

write the research paper the way it was supposed to be written. For many who had no prior

knowledge writing research papers, especially in MLA format, this essay would be almost

impossible to do. Of course, it’s not impossible when students have the internet at their

fingertips, but having no guidance from their professors or instructors would make it seem like it

is impossible to write it. Fortunately, that was not the case when writing this essay. Although the
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essay was something new, and many had no experience writing a research paper, the instructor

was very helpful. The support teacher also helped create a format for the essay that was simple to

follow.

Another challenging aspect of the research paper was the experiment itself. Even if it was

just for five days, having to follow a certain schedule, especially with no motivation, disrupted

every other activity we had during the day. The experiment left no choice but to have us

experimenters follow a schedule in order to complete the essay. It was definitely one of the

harder parts to do when drafting the essay. Since the experiment contained naps, I didn’t feel like

getting up and doing anything else. That itself was a whole other challenge.

Even if it was not the best essay I had ever written, it can still be improved once it is

included in the final portfolio. In fact, this essay left a lot of space for improvement, and a lot of

things to edit. Although that will leave more work to be completed and redone in the future, I

will be a lot more satisfied with an essay that I genuinely like. Personally, I consider being able

to edit it in the future a good thing. It might add a lot more work to my day, but at least this

research paper will become something that I am proud of, and I look forward to that.