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Leslie Alvarez
Dr. Charity Nelson
ENGL 1302 101
5 December 2022
Final Reflection Essay
I still cannot believe that, yet another semester has ended. Time is passing so fast that I

am still thinking I am missing something besides the exam, homework, or a visit to ACE. I still

remember the days when I had to get up at 6:00 in the morning to get to my first class of the day,

which was no more and no less than ENGL 1302-101 at 8:30 a.m. Seeing how time has passed

without a doubt fills me with nostalgia, and even more to see what I have learned and left behind.

I always considered myself someone educated and with extensive knowledge in reading as well

in writing, but that was only when it came to my mother language, Spanish. Saying that I had to

take a CIRW class to first be able to attend an ENGL 1301 class says a lot about me, don’t you

think? From that moment, I came to think that my writing ability was not something I was able

to do, that I was mediocre, that was better if I focused on other things. However, this course has

only encouraged me to continue writing and to know that writing is not always perfect, even so

many editors or people have passed the remarkable stories to correct the writing from those

prestigious writers.

All the reviews I list in each of my three essays can be found on my website, beginning

with my Personal Experiment and Research Essay. Ever since my first draft, I knew I had to do

something that would entertain me in the process to really have an interest in the time when I

must come with a conclusion for that experiment and give me a fresh objective point of view. So,

I focused on how social media and the impact of it has on the mental health of young people. I

know from comments and other researchers that there have been some negative effects caused by
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social media on those who are younger. However, this time the researcher will be me. I also

wanted to see and study about the benefits that moving away from social media completely could

bring to me, a young woman, and how more people would be beneficiated by this information. I

planned to use a test subject other than myself, but I decided that no one could give me a better

response to what was experienced through the experiment than me. But even so, I decided to

give myself the opportunity to know better the opinion of others about withdrawing from social

networks or about their use of it. However, at the time of conducting my review based on this

essay, I realized that this questionnaire did not provide anything useful to my research. This

made me remove that questionary, and if you ask me, I was plaining to eliminate it from the

start, however, I wanted to know what my professor was thinking. The end? It was better to

remove it. I also tried to guide my reader to what really mattered, the consequences of social

networks, to know the repercussions. I also slightly changed the method section in my first essay,

because when reading it became confusing for the reader, so I try to make the method section

more smoothly. Then I also removed some data that clearly should not be in the method section

since it belonged to the results discussion section. In addition to the fact that the revision of the

essay one was worked on with my English tutor who was available to me as a member of TRIO.

Next, I revised my Research Analysis Essay with Annotated Bibliography. I started by

making sure to now use the ten necessary sources for this essay, since I had missed using two

authors before making me only use eight researchers. Then I had to reconstruct certain

paragraphs of the essay to make a distinction between the scholars and the points they were

making. Certainly, keeping me inserting some of my points of view in this essay was difficult for

me due to me to like to give an opinion about everything. I was so thankful for the suggestions of

my professor and my tutor, their comments really made me see some errors in the essay and
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then, to be able to make an appropriate follow-up between the "conversation" of the scholars. In

the other hand, my annotated bibliography exceeded the similarity check, so I need to make to

change that. Luckily, the similarity exceeded just from a 4% and I was able to change to make

sure I use most of my words than the scholars and their work.

For my Position Essay, the third and final essay, I started by reviewing my teacher's

suggestions on how to improvise my essay. I knew that this part where I must make revisions

was the most complicated for me since it is difficult for me to see my mistakes without someone

guiding me during this process. Firstly, I had to break certain paragraphs so that my points were

understandable, because my points were getting loose with the contributions of the scholars. In

addition, that the reader could be connected to my thesis statement with each of the points I was

providing in the essay. Besides, I tried to find the spaces where I could add information to make

my point clear in every paragraph. Then, the first paragraph of my body structure lacked

something to support it the contribution I was making with my position, so this made to read

through all my sources again to remember where I got that point from and to be able to include a

contribution in this paragraph as proof of why I was giving that position. Then I tried to make

sure that I did not skip any other mistake. I can say I read this essay at least twenty-five times,

and it was a little bit difficult for me to make these changes because I really liked the way this

essay was presented the first time. However, when I finished the revision, I saw that now this

essay was better than the other that I was thinking it was the definitive.

I think I can very well give a lot of credit to the groups where we collaborated with other

classmates to review their works and then have them to review ours. Seeing the work of others

helped me a lot to guide me through the creative process and even to understand what we should

write about. I remember that it was too difficult for me to guide me or even start to write the
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second essay, but when I revised some of my classmate papers, I finally understood what I

needed to do, and with that, I started drafting that essay. In addition, collaborating with peer-

reviewed helped me in the same way because I was receiving comments and suggestions from

my classmates. Even many times my classmates were able to highlight errors that were invisible

to me, how to improve certain sentences, and what they enjoyed reading in my essay or what was

interesting from them. I was really motivated by that, it showed me that I did not need to be

ashamed of sometimes having only one paragraph because there was always a way to continue

and improve. Another constant homework assignment that helped to stay organized was the

Project Management Packet. For those packets I was able to stay conscious about deadliness and

the requirements from all the essays.

The design of my essay was something difficult for me to decide. I wanted it to be

significant with my process of writing and as a writer. Then I finally decided that my website

should be inspired by the night. The reason is because I always had a feeling of comforting about

the night. A certain warmth that only occurs when the sun starts to disappear in the water and the

moon takes place to illuminate the darkness made by the absence of the sun. Also because of my

essays, even homework was started to be written at the beginning of the disappearance of the

sun. So, I consider it was incredibly significant to provide images of cities, places, or roads at

night, because those images were the things I usually saw while working as a writer.

I really enjoy decorating and doing work that was pleasing to the eye because it contains

visuals that are considered attractive. The presentation is especially important when it comes to

handing in a work, so I hope this website is pleasing to my professor and all the people who were

able to find this portfolio where you can see my progression as a writer. The first image tries to

give that feeling of warmth and comfort. Something that you have seen at least one time in your
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life or something you cand find is you give a walk during this time. The night is something

merely precious and that I consider very pleasing to the eye. I want that the people who read this

portfolio may be able to portrait the image of a young writer who was sometimes in her room,

other times alone, other times outside when she refused to enter her house because the weather

was very pleasant and although she didn’t see much due to the lack of light, the night was what

she needed to be able to finish writing those essays.

It was a challenge for me to understand Weebly, since I had previously worked with Wix,

I sincerely do not consider having spent many hours editing this website because I already knew

what I wanted to put on it once the theme was decided. However, I can admit that I have spent so

many hours revising these essays and even with that, I am messing something in these essays.

But that is the magic that someone can get from writing.

Throughout this Fall Semester, I can honestly say that my knowledge of English has

grown at least a little. Going from ENGL 1301 to ENGL 1302 certainly is quite exciting and a

challenge because you have no idea that you will be asked to write this semester. I learned how

to cite correctly, and it is something that I am incredibly grateful and relieved of, since I

constantly feared committing plagiarism by not quoting correctly. I learned to write an annotated

bibliography; it was a challenge for me to read those peer-reviewed articles, but it was a lot of

fun to be able to give the summary in my second essay. To be honest, first I would tell my mom

about the essay in my own words and then I would write what I told her. Finally, I ended up

making revisions and citing ideas that were not completely my own. In fact, you can find my

annotated bibliography next to my essay number 2. Although Research Analysis with Annotated

Bibliography (Essay 2) was difficult for me because I doubted if I would be able to get my

scholars to have a "debate" with each other, I discovered that I was able to do it thanks to the
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many constructive comments from my peers. And finally, I was able to learn much more about

the MLA format and how to implement it not only in my essays but also in my cited works.

Although I have made great progress, I certainly still lack certain aspects that prevent me

from being a better writer. Just like many times I do not usually connect my dots with the

information provided by other scholars. In addition to the fact that the structure of the bodies

paragraphs continues to be something that needs of my work and improvement, due that many

times I leave my essays without any space, causing them to lose the sentence structure and the

ideas that were mine. Finally, even if this is my second ENGL class, I am missing to be able to

identify my errors on my own. However, I also know that was an improvement from ENGL 1301

to ENGL 1302, I just need more dedication and patience to be able to improve. Everything I

learned in my ENGL 1302 class will really be useful for my next courses. I am grateful that my

mother and now this class have improved my debating skills. I never considered that I could be

able to debate through a paper, I really hated the idea of not being able to prove my arguments

completely as I can do it by talking. However, this course showed me that it was possible. This

will help me to make argumentative responses in other courses that need it, such as I imagine

doing with Criminal Justice. Also, the understanding that I have now about how to use the

correct MLA style will save me from feeling the constant anxiety of making a mistake in one of

my other essays that I could submit in the future. As I have mentioned before in my other

Reflective Essays, you never learn something that is going to be useless or useless. I am a person

who often connects things that people do not make sense of, but for me it makes understanding

things much easier. Meaning that I know I would be able to use all the new things I learn about

writing and English.

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My identity as a writer has changed thanks to this course, I remember that my first essay

made me extremely nervous because I did not know how I was going to be able to write an essay

where I did not use "I" since I was the test subject. Then my second essay which gave me the

difficulty that I was not going to be able to start writing because I did not have the best idea of

how to create the discussion even after getting help from my professor. To finally write my third

and last essay with too much inspiration as it was about a subject that interested me. And

certainly, if something is going to stay with me, it is that writing is a full process that requires

patience and time. Like someone who usually does things right the first time, and if it is not, she

leaves it, it was difficult for me to go back repeatedly to read the articles, to review my essay, to

think repeatedly that I was missing something to write a good essay. So much so that many

nights I just stared through my window. Then I was able to understand that writing is a beautiful

creative process, and just as artists do not have a drawing the first time, neither do writers. We

start with an idea, then we flesh it out. We have the first draft, the second, and then we turn in

our final paper. And even after we consider that this is the end, there are still corrections that can

be made. The process is something that will always require time, but it is something that you can

enjoy doing if you take your time. I am sure that these 14 weeks of learning were, indeed,

something that improved my life as a writer.