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Kate De La O

Instructor McCann

English 1302.203

19 February 2022

Reflection of “Cold Turkey”

Partaking in this self-experimentation was a journey full of challenges and a whole lot of

sense of accomplishment. The audacity to take on such a path of development in life, with the

soul drive of progression in some way despite unforeseen results. Experiences gained throughout

this writing journey have greatly influenced my writing. This being the first experimental essay,

many doubts inhibited the ability to write a cohesive initial paper. As an aspiring writer, taking

on this new essay is one of the many factors that improves a segment or the writing process as a

whole. There was an apparent growth in writing capability and experience that will further

influence future assignments.

With knowledge and experience gained from the previous semester, English 1301, writing

this experimental essay, "Cold Turkey," was not as daunting as writing the first English 1301,

"The Problem Hidden in The Shadows." Having already tackled new formatting of an essay,

intimidation to begin this unfamiliar format of an experimental paper was minimal. However,

after gathering the results of the experiment and opening a blank page, writer's block struck.

Coming back yet again to plague creativity and inspiration, leaving the page like a sleet of snow.

If prior encounters with writer's block in English 1301 have taught me anything, it is that in order

to overcome writer's block, one must find a balance between familiarity and potential. Typically,

writer's block reveals itself when a new project is introduced or when a project is too familiar.

Not having a sense of familiarity leaves the writer lost, confused, and overwhelmed, not knowing
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where to begin. While being overly familiar, leaves a writer stuck in a pattern, feeling as though

each paper contains the same content, the same sentences. As though it is one continuous paper

full of repetition and redundancy. Thankfully, science classes are full of experiments and new

discoveries. Finding a reference of the scientific process in this scientific paper presented this

perfect balance, the perfect cure to overcome writer's block. With just enough familiarity to

begin and enough potential in view, the sleet of snow was gradually speckled.

As previously mentioned, this experimental paper differs greatly from any prior papers. In

English 1301, the majority of papers centered around the same general idea, the analysis of

rhetoric. This general idea allowed more room for a poetic sense of writing, full of emotion and

metaphors. Whereas the paper "Cold Turkey" is entirely literal and formal in tone. After working

on and improving what I call a poetic style of writing for a whole semester, this shift to formal

writing is, in a sense, refreshing. Formal writing is a safe place, a comfort zone. Expressing

emotion in my writings has never been my forte. Poetic writing was a skill acquired and

enhanced in the previous semester, English 1301. "Cold Turkey" is an essay on the experiment

administered and conducted on oneself. The experiment was to inhibit coffee intake and measure

its effects on productivity, mood, stress, fatigue, and meal count per day. Conducting, reporting,

and analyzing an experiment is beneficial in, possibly, none other than a science course.

Prior knowledge of essay formatting was essentially useless. Being a scientific paper, the usual

explanatory intro-body-conclusion could not be applied. Rather the formatting in an APA paper

was considered and reflected in this scientific MLA paper.

Besides having proven practice of the scientific process, "Cold Turkey" served as an

implementation for avoiding the utilization of personal pronouns. Yes, previous essays in

English 1301 also omitted the usage of personal pronouns but differed in the aspect that "Cold
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Turkey" revolved around a self-experiment. When articulating papers for English 1301, they

were rhetorical analyses of other authors' works, thus allowing me as a writer to insert phrases

such as "the author stated" and "the choice to do" to specify the subject of the paper. Whereas in

"Cold Turkey," the subject was myself and my experience, making it all the more challenging to

structure sentences around the usage of personal pronouns while simultaneously implying that I

was the experimenter and experimented. The methodology portion of the essay was perhaps the

most difficult. Before beginning this portion, a disillusion of ease swept my mind, a vision of me

sitting down typing away without a problem. I could not have been more wrong. The content

seems entirely identical and repetitive because it is. Each day was recorded in the same aspects,

thus being described in the same way, leading to a very irritating and boring portion to read and

write. Tweaking and adjusting sentence structure was the only way to keep the paper from

circling around and losing the readers to either disinterest, boredom, or flat-out confusion.

Finding new ways to creatively mention repeated factors and characteristics of the experiment

took an enormous amount of effort and is something that needs to be further explored and

practiced.

As any paper, "Cold Turkey" had its up and downs, its high and lows, its moments of

success and moments of frustration. Now, having written an experimental essay, a new narrative

has been adopted. Being able to find ways to write about myself in a formal first-person tone,

without the use of personal pronouns, and not referring to myself in third-person broadens the

formatting and structure of future papers. Learning to write an experimental essay not only

benefits my writing spectrum but provides a practice and base to future more complicated and

elaborative APA formatted papers. With each new experience comes a new lesson, in more

aspects than one, some more obvious, others becoming conscious only until needed.