Ramirez 1

Blanca Ramirez

Professor Briones

English 1302-228

8 February 2024

Reflection Essay

During this first essay, I learned that academic research is crucial to preparing for an

annotated bibliography or any essay in general. Without research, writing an essay about a

certain topic is nearly impossible. It is important to research to be able to gather all the facts of a

topic to make your essay reliable. Spending hours researching can turn your paper from a D to an

A because it allows you to be able to discuss different areas of a topic. I learned that research is

essential in any college course that requires discussions or essays to be able to defend your

thoughts or be able to argue for your topic. For example, some people may believe that CPS is

one of the best services in the world, but others might argue that CPS is corrupt. Therefore, one

may research to prove their own opinions on a subject.

An annotated bibliography is a crucial part of my research because it helps me to gather

different articles and write a summary of each article to help decide which articles better fit my

topic. An annotated bibliography helps my writing because it helps me focus on a specific article

and write the data obtained from the article to help my case. It will help me to approach research

because it involves doing the research in parts to help me better understand an article and then

continue to the rest of the research. For example, some classes offer a short period to conduct

essays; therefore, putting together an annotated bibliography may help me to stay on track with

time.
 Ramirez 2

Receiving feedback from my professor allowed me to fix the formatting of my essay to

receive a better grade. I rely on feedback because it helps me to see the mistakes I made and how

I can fix them. The formatting in my essay was not in MLA format, however now I know how to

fix it because my professor showed me how. Another part of my essay that I needed to change

was the alphabetical order of the citations. Even though I knew about the alphabetical order from

previous essays, it was something that slipped through my head and I forgot about it until my

professor reminded me.

The most challenging aspect of this essay was finding articles that related to my topic and

had reliable information. Most of the articles I was bumping into were talking about unnecessary

subjects relating to my topic. The least challenging part of writing this essay was writing the

summaries of each article. Since I chose a topic that I found interesting, all the articles I input

into my annotated bibliography grasped my attention. In conclusion, writing the summaries was

something fast for me to do since I would read the articles and clearly understand the point they

were trying to get across.