Bernardo Magallanes\

English 1302

May 7, 2024

Professor Trisha Briones

Throughout this course, I was required to look through many different peer-reviewed

articles pertaining to my subject of interest. Although at the beginning of the semester I broke

down my subject of interest into different areas as we learned by example in class, I had a few

hiccups in my search for articles. While looking for sources for my annotated bibliography, I

found many interesting points of view my argument on assisted suicide. The main arguments I

found were on public opinion, patient and family opinion, healthcare worker’s opinion, debates

on the terminology used and method of passing the legislature, and on the rights of minors or

individuals with intellectual disabilities and or autism. This left me with about 13 or so sources

to frame my second essay from. As I moved on to my second essay, I realized my initial prompt

on defending the rights to assisted suicide did not fit the varying sources I had. Although I had

practiced in my annotated bibliography where and how each source could fit in with one another,

I realized I: 1. Had sources that didn't relate to my initial argument and 2. Had too many sources

that didn't relate to each other and 3. Had sources that didn't “argue a point” but rather studied a

specific field unbiasedly. Because of this, despite really engaging with the content, had to

remove the sources that dealt with studying the rights of minors and individuals with intellectual

disabilities and or autism. This left me with the two categories of sources I used in my third

essay: public opinion and legality, and debate language and terminology. When it came to

looking through the sources and choosing which sentences I would use, I found myself rereading

many of the sources again and again. Each new day I would highlight with a different color
depending on which state of the 3 essays I was writing. I found that having my annotated

bibliography on my side physically helped narrow down the connections I had found. I learned

overall that I should have approached my academic research more intensivly and as an

assignment in itself. Furthermore, I believe breaking down the subject more and talking with

peers will help myself see holes in my prompt that can be caught before I begin writing my

essay.

During the writing process, I learned a lot about mysef as a writer. Beginning the

semester, I knew I somewhat liked writing when the subject interested me but had trouble

starting and focusing on the actual writing part. I knew this of myself because of my first attempt

to take this course during my second semester my freshmen year. In taking this course, I chose

the prompt on military spending and I argued that millitary spending effects other areas of the

United States negatively. In this class, I was very lazy and had a lot of trouble starting my work

at all. I had just gotten diagnosed with ADHD but was unaware with how much it effected me

during my school work. Because of this, I would leave my assignments off to the very last

minute. Although this did allow me to put the pressure I needed to finish the work, this effected

the overall quality of my assignments. Furthermore, my lack of preparation n my initial source

challanged me as I did not know which sources to look at. I eventually chose sources that

directly argued against eachother. While this sounded great initially, I learned later that my third

essay did not have any consent and writing of my own.I was simply copying off my sources.

Because I knew this of myself, I was extra careful to choose which area of study I wanted to look

into. My initial prompts dealt with leadership in the management world, assisted suicide, and the

study of students with ADHD/ADD and their performance in education. Although these 3 areas

were all very interesting to me, I decided to go with assisted suicide as it not only resonated with
me well but was controversial in nature, leading me to believe the sources arguing their stance

would be easier to evaluate than the other 2 prompts. As I began writing my second and third

essays, I was able to adapt better to the writing burdens I had. Knowing I had issue starting the

writing process, I began to dedicate an hour or 2 in the Skylab to just research or specific

paragraphs. With this mindset, I tricked myself into thinking I would not be doing a lot of work. I

learned this studying method through a youtube video on ADHD, which I am diagnosed with.

Despite only wanting to spend an hour or 2 on small parts of the essay, I would often become

very hyper focused on the essay and ended up spending much more hours on the essay than I

planned. Whether this is for better or for worse, I am unsure. However the fact that I was

challenged to write these three essays allowed me to realize and take action against the writing

challenges I faced.

In my website, I had spent a lot of time trying to figure out how I would convey

something as grim and dark as suicide was to my audience. I intially went with a white steril

look to my website to look like a hospital of sorts but did not like the look it gave off. I

eventually chose a dark theme and selected pictures that made the reader think about big ideas.

The picture on the front page with the man walking along a black-and-white path helped convey

a sense of direction. With this, I didnt explicitly explain what each essay was about but more

about the feelings it conveyed. I posed the question “who gets to decide your fate” to the

audience as this fit the overall narrative I wanted about whos influenced in the legislative process

and the debate itself. I did have a lot of trouble submitting my photos to the website itself

although. I initially had a great idea to implement the revisions I made into the final draft itself

where you would see red lines across where I changed and put revisions in. Unfortunately, My

phone pictures uploaded to google drive in a different file than PDF. Because of this, I spent
almost half an hour or more simply taking all the photos I took on my phone of my peer review

work and sending it to a PDF changer. This left with the only choice to create a slideshow at the

bottom which came out nice enough.

Throughout the revising process, I had good and bad experiences. I found that the best

experience I had was during our in-class peer review workshop in which we got to speak 1 on 1

with our classmates to further clarify their review on my work. Not only did this allow me to

better see the revision changes they wanted to see but it also helped me to get to know my

classmates and made the class less awkward. I had many reviews that told me my formatting of

the essay was wrong. Specifically, my in text sources which did or did not include the last name.

Secondly, I was told through instructor and peer review feedback that my introduction in my

third essay was really long. I did realize it but I wanted to be able to introduce all ideas and

arguments within the introduction as well as have an outside example included in my

introduction. From this feedback, I cut down on a lot of extra information which included

personal opinions and extra/irrelevant information. Further more, I learned from a lot of my

peers that I had many simple spelling and grammatically errors. I believe this came from my

attempt to write everything as fast as possible. Although I did not intend to write as fast as I

would while writing, my ability to forget everything and hyper-focus on the essay caused these

simple grammatical issues. Lastly, I was told by some peers that the wording in some of my

sentences didn't flow well with one another. I actually received this comment from another peer

review in my philosophy class on my essay there. I realized that I spent too much time trying to

get my ideas and the sentence structure down that I did not account for the flow or direction of

the entire paragraph. This made it, as reviewers stated, hard to see what my point was. It was

relatively easy to fix this issue; all I had to do was change some of the beginning and endings of
sentences and rearrange them in my essays. Although this does not fix the issues while I am

actively writing said work, I believe knowing that I have a tendency to misinterpret the

paragraph's main idea will allow me to be considerate of it in my future writing.

The most challenging part of this writing process was my ability to retain my mindset

while hyperfocused on my essay. As stated before, I had trouble starting my work. As I learned

to dedicate more time to specific parts of the essay, which eventually led to me spending more

time than I initially wanted, I found it hard to remember what my mindset was in past writing

sessions. I had trouble remembering which arguments I wanted to put into the essay and where

they would go. I believe I could have avoided this with 1. A better map of my prompt and the

direction I want the essay to go and 2. Taking notes during the writing process. I don't think it

has to be elaborate or in-depth but so long as I write what is going on in my head while im

writing, I can help my future self continue where I left off. Although I did not overcome this

challenge this semester, I am glad I encountered the issue as being aware is the first step to fixing

any issue.

The least challenging part of this course was the in-person class itself. I found that many

of the activities we did in class were engaging and informative without taking away too much

time at home where we worked on the essay. Seeing presentations each week from different

individuals allowed me to digest the information in class instead of at home where I would

probably just read and forget about the work. Not only did these in class presentations help with

digesting the chapter contents but it also helped me get to know my classmates better. Similarly, I

got to learn more about my classmates during our peer review and most especially, our court date

assignments. I vividly remember Miranda and I being really nervous to go up and debate our
topic to the other members of the class. That class was probably the most fun I had in a class this

semester.

I do feel that this course has adequately prepared me to be apart of the academic research

community. Although I did take this course once before, where I had to drop due to family

events, I learned from my experience that my first attempt of the class was drastically different

than my second, this semester. If I had stuck through with my initial class, I do not believe I

would be the writer I am today. From choosing a prompt, and dissecting the prompt, to

researching and writing the essay, I learned a lot about myself as a writer.

I have loved this class since I first arrived. I was scared at first to attempt ENGL 1302

again from my failed attempt my freshman year. I learned very early on that you as a professor

cared a lot about the course and made it extremely efficient. The overall organization of the

essays as well as your help in discovering how exactly to break down our sources helped me

immensely in my writing process. This semester, this class was one of the few that I actively

looked forward to going to everyday.