Rene Capistran

Professor Hollinger

7/10/2022

Final Reflection

ENG 1301 – 91L

I won’t sit here and type up an essay of fluff and lies just to try and get a better grade. I

won’t say that I feel as though this class has improved my writing game ten-fold. I won’t tell you

that this class has changed the way I see literature forever. I will tell you, however, that after

what feels like one of the quickest semesters of my life, I feel as though this class has somehow

had a more positive impact on my abilities as a researcher than all my previous classes

combined.

Usually, when assigning a research paper, teachers and professors will give students a

narrow prompt with strict criteria regarding what they can include in their paper. Some will go as

far as to specify how many paragraphs the student should write about each sub-topic, putting the

student into a situation where they are practically following a cooking recipe to bake an essay

that is almost identical to all of the other students’ essays, since the prompt might as well be a

cookie-cutter. I have always been opposed to these styles of assignments, as I believe that they

discourage creative thinking and, more importantly, elude the interest of students. This results in

poorly conducted research, sloppy writing, and the formation of bad researching and writing

habits. I’ve never entirely understood why teachers choose these types of writing prompts.
Maybe it’s to teach that you’re not always going to be interested in what you’re writing about.

Maybe it’s because the school’s curriculum doesn’t allow for creativity. Maybe it’s just easier to

grade that way. Whatever the case is, I always appreciate having a somewhat broad prompt, so

that I get to choose some aspects of what I’m writing about. Assignments become much easier

when you’re interested in what you are writing about because you’re not just researching for an

assignment; You’re researching for personal interest.

All of this is not to say that this is my first assignment with a broad prompt. I’ve had

broad prompts in the past. This is, however, one of the few times that I’m genuinely interested in

the topic I have chosen; I’ve always been interested in technology and its effects on literacy. As

an individual who learned to type almost entirely by playing RuneScape, I chose my topic

already going into the assignment with a pre-formed hypothesis. When reading through my

sources, I was reading with genuine curiosity, which meant that I was genuinely learning about

my topic. Because of this, while I was composing my paper, I already knew which source and

were where within each source to look through to find the information I needed.

To conclude, while I may not have learned too much about writing, I did learn a good bit

about researching, and even picked up a few good researching habits (Like highlighting useful

information. It seems like something obvious, but I’ve never really thought to do it before now).

I’m always grateful to get a broad prompt, and I’m sure that I can apply much of what I learned

while researching to future assignments.