Guzman III 1

Francisco Guzman III

ENGL 1302 – 207

Ana Mendoza

28 April 2024
ENGL 1302 Final Reflection Essay
Each one of the writing assignments that I worked on during this ENGL 1302 course was
connected to one another to form the evidence and information I used to support my argument in my final
essay. This allowed a sense of flow and alleviated the stress of having to come up with new topics for
each essay. Because of this, I am able to properly reflect on what I learned in this course with clarity as I
am not blinded with a negative view due to stress that the course could’ve provided had it not been for the
connectivity present during the semester. During my time in this course, I learned many important skills
pertaining to the academic research process such as wise time management. More specifically, I learned
how to pace myself when reading and summarizing long journal articles and when I should stop to take a
break. When taking a break, it is important to not go on your phone as you can end up spending more
time than you should scrolling through apps. That is why when I take a break, I usually go and grab
something to eat to help me fill up on energy while also making sure that I can get right back to the
articles whenever possible. When it comes to citation practices, they were basically the same as my last
ENGL course so I did not have to focus on improving this aspect of my writing. The time management
skills and citation skills I learned from this ENGL 1302 and my previous ENGL 1301 course can and will
incorporated into future courses as well as my future professional career in general as I will have to
continue to do research on topics while also making sure that I properly cite each source I wish to use.
In this course, I learned many important parts of the writing process that are necessary for you to
write a clear and well-thought-out paper for any course. The most important component of the writing
process I learned this semester was the importance of peer review and professor feedback as due to the
lack of thereof, my papers were not as strong as I would have wanted them to be. For my last ENGL
course, I had made sure to at least get one of the two for each and every paper I wrote; however, due to
my negligence, I was not able to uphold this standard for this semester of papers leading to weaker papers
for my ENGL 1302 class. Another important part of the writing process I learned this semester was the
importance of in-class assignments as they helped greatly with the formatting of this semester's papers.
Most of them directly correlated to the writing assignment of the time and helped me get a proper idea of
what I needed to do for each and every paper. This course has provided me with the necessary writing
skills in order to succeed in any future course.
From the revision of my third and final paper, I learned that when you are arguing about the main
topic of your paper, you must be sure to have an “active voice” rather than a “passive voice” in your
writing. Essentially, you must argue about something and make it abundantly clear of the negatives or
positives of a topic. For example, in my writings, it seemed that I was underplaying the dangers of both
Recommendation algorithms and AI Chatbots in the original document. I made sure to change this in my
revision by further emphasizing the dangers both these technologies present and how they can negatively
affect the world at large. This revision of my paper also taught me that it is vital that you make sure that
the information and evidence you present are divided properly into their respective paragraphs as failure
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to do so will lead to bloating and repetitiveness in your writing. This can lead to an overall weaker sense
of professionalism and thus, invalidates your argument for your readers. I noticed I had this issue with
one of my paragraphs in my essay relating to AI Chatbots and in the revision, I chose to divide the
paragraph as it had provided two pieces of evidence that did not fit well together. One final little detail I
learned not to ignore is the age-old case of misspelling and accidentally repeating words in your writing.
Upon further analysis of my original paper, I found many grammatical, spelling, and otherwise novice
issues that could have been resolved had I just taken one last look at my essay before I submitted it for
review. The revision of my final paper overall has taught me that although I have improved in my writing
since my years in high school, I still have much to learn when it comes to writing at the professional
college level.
One of the most challenging aspects of revising my third paper was simply finding the energy to
simply put down whatever I was doing at the time and work on the revision essay. I tend to have a major
problem with procrastination, and it negatively affects my grades and overall life in general. Sticking to
the academic aspect of this issue, however, I chose to leave this for the last minute as I thought it would
be difficult to find out which paper I wanted to revise which further discouraged me from finishing this
revision. I also felt like the assignment would be tedious and that I could simply put it off for another time
further exacerbating the problem further. However, once I decided enough was enough, I finally began to
work on finding which essay I wanted to revise and found out that the final essay I had submitted felt
incomplete and did not properly convey the argument I wanted to make. As I began to work on revising
my final essay I found out that it didn’t even feel that difficult and I had greatly overestimated how much
work needed to be done. I finished it in around an hour and actually enjoyed myself while doing so as I
was given the opportunity to properly state what I wanted to argue about in the original essay. The
revision was not hard or difficult, and with this newfound knowledge, I will hopefully not make the same
mistake in the future of constant procrastination.
On my website, I choose to communicate to my general audience the purpose of each work
shown on screen by giving a general description of each draft, final draft, reflection paper, and
assignments that were used along the way. I also made sure to include context for any missing
information that could not be provided. For example, for each of the first drafts for each essay, I explained
whether or not I had received professor feedback or peer review for the assignment as well as explaining
why I couldn’t if I wasn’t able to. As well as this, for my researched position, I stated why I was not able
to include three assignments required for the assignment tab as I could not find any assignments that I
worked on or used at the time of writing that paper. To further illustrate the topic of my work to the
reader, I chose images that related to technology and AI to provide visual context to the argument I
wished to present for my papers. With this idea in mind, I also chose a color scheme for both the
background and the text featured on the website to match this technological theme. I believe with all of
these features and details, my website properly conveys what I worked on for ENGL 1302 to my
audience, that being my peers and my professor.
The most challenging aspect of this course was finding and reading through at least 10 peer-
reviewed journal articles that were long and filled with loads of information that I had to summarize.
Reading through all 10 of them in two days was something I had to do due to my poor time management
skills and procrastination and worse yet, I had to do so while summarizing them. Through this struggle,
however, I learned how to properly take breaks between reading and writing sessions to give my brain a
break. Another challenging aspect of this course was choosing a topic I wanted to work on for the entire
semester as the original topic I wanted to work on, that being the dead internet theory, was not well
researched; therefore, I had to take what I could from that idea and instead go with two similar topics of
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Algorithmic recommendation systems and AI Chatbots in social media. I had help with my professor in
our first meeting with this decision and they helped me find the sites I could use to find peer-reviewed
journal articles relating to my topic. Actually finding the articles was a challenge in itself as most of the
articles I found were either not peer-reviewed or outdated since the topic I was researching, more
specifically AI Chatbots, was a relatively new technology and thus did not have much academic research
put into it. Thankfully, through careful and tedious effort, I was able to find the right amount of articles
for my papers but in the future, I will probably stick to more common topics as it was a hassle to research
my current one. One final challenge I faced in this course was the issue of procrastination as for many of
the assignments and essays, I chose to complete them last minute even though I had been provided with
their exact due date and an ample amount of time to complete them. This led to sloppy work at best and
negatively affected my grade as well as the argument that I had sought to originally make in my final
paper. All of these challenges I faced during this ENGL 1302, I feel, has provided me with the knowledge
and skills needed to ensure that I succeed in any future professional or academic endeavor I wish to
pursue.
The least challenging part of this course was being interested in the topic I was researching as I
have always had an interest in technology that is presented on popular social media sites. I have also been
aware of the dangers that these technologies present and the opportunity to share what I know about this
risk was one that I took with gratitude. I also found it relatively easy to write out my thoughts on the topic
and my argument on the topic as I have always been fond of writing. It was also relatively easy to keep on
course as I was provided with the proper due dates as well as the needed time to complete each and every
assignment in the course. Because of previously retained skills from past courses and because the course
was laid out clearly by my professor, I had an easier time going through this course.
If there is one thing college has taught me most it is that one if not every one of your courses will
have both research and writing involved in them in one way or another. While adjusting to this has been
difficult for not just me but my peers as well, I think that with the proper education and guidance, this
stress can and will be alleviated. It is with this notion that I believe that my ENGL 1301 course and my
ENGL 1302 course have provided me with the skills and insight needed to research a topic, form an
argument on the topic, and argue about the topic with the proper evidence and structure that is required
for professional level writing. I believe that these two courses have prepared me and my peers to become
part of the academic research community that is not only present in TAMIU, but will continue to be
present for the foreseeable future.