Mary Armantrout

Spring 2023 English 2010

Professor Smith

May 1, 2023

Self-Reflection

My final essay was on the debate of animal testing. It discusses the belief that animal testing

in unethical and wrong. Animal testing has been an ongoing debate for decades. The goal of my

essay was to help people understand and hopeful convince why animal testing is wrong.

This essay was a process to write in order to get the message I wanted across. I first did a

rough outline of the main points. I used that as a guide and elaborated on each point to create my

rough draft. Finally, I wrote my final draft making a few corrections to my draft. This included

running the essay through a grammar corrector, changing from a personal tone using I and we to

an informative tone using this essay, rephrasing for clarity, and adding subheading. I made these

changes to improve the essay. They help make it flow easier and allow for more clarity.

I wrote this essay not only to help others understand the issue but to help develop my

own skills as well. Writing this essay will help me in my animal science class since one of our

units is on cloning and animal testing. Writing this essay will also help me in my leadership

development class, being able to educate and convince people of your stand point effectively is

very important.
 As I mentioned earlier this essay had helped me gather a better understanding of the issue

and the world in general. Writing the counterclaim really helped me understand how the other

side thinks and how their can be valid points for both sides of arguments. It changed my

assumption of there being a right and wrong way and that everything always isn’t black and

white, there are some grey areas.

Although writing this essay was super educational and helpful, I did face some

challenges. One of the biggest ones was knowing where to even start with such a large

assignment. I overcame this by rewatching some of the videos in the lessons and taking it one

step at a time so it wasn’t so overwhelming.

As a writer I want to be able to effectively communicate my thoughts and feeling is a

respectful understandable way. I want the audience to be everyone not just one side or the other.

I also want the audience to enjoy what they are reading.

Finally, I want to do a self-assessment of this assignment. Personally, I feel that I would

give myself a B+ or A-. I feel this way because I have grown so much throughout this course and

feel that this is the best essay I have written this far. I feel that I made the changes that needed to

be made and was able to communicate my argument effectively.