Martinez 1

Jazmin Martinez

Judith R. McCann

ENGL 1301 213

14 April 2023

Reflection for “America’s Biggest Debate”

From shitty first drafts to fully organized and thought-out essays, I have come a long way

with my writing. This essay has been the most fun to write even though I was stuck in major

writer’s block and could not explain myself the way I wanted to. I enjoy writing essays that ask

for my opinion and stance on a viewpoint rather than writing about something that I would hate

to discuss. Essay 1 was about us experimenting and gathering results and proving what we found

was true, and for this essay, there was no experimenting but what helped me from essay 1 was

compiling more articles to further support my viewpoint. Essay 2 helped me with this essay

because it was a continuation of it. The previous articles I had gathered helped me find 4 new

articles to include in this essay.

Furthermore, some things I learned from the past two essays I did not use for this third

essay, such as the experimenting and the author's own opinions. I did learn more from this essay

than the previous essays. Abortion discussions can be emotional and contentious, so it is critical

to approach the subject with understanding and respect for unique perspectives and personal

experiences. Reading the different articles on why being pro-life or pro-choice is “better” helped

me realize that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but that is it. People cannot force other

people to think that only one opinion is better than the other and instead, they should support

whatever the other person believes. Although the information that I learned whilst writing this

essay was important to me, I do not think it can be applied to any other courses I am currently

taking.
 Martinez 2

Moreover, arguments are intended to persuade the reader to agree with the author.

Improving the persuasiveness of my writing will help it by offering a solid argument and

supporting it with evidence. As well as with organization, focus, and clarity. This helped me be

more organized with my essay following my thesis and not go off on tangents of different topics,

though it was hard to not write more than I need to. As this is one of the last reflection essays, I

may ever write, I finally understand my own writing strengths and weaknesses. I am good at

incorporating research into my writing, which may not sound like a strength to some but to me, it

is, because not many people are able to look at articles and understand what the author has

written. As well as, clarity, the ability to write clearly and concisely, which helps readers follow

and understand complex ideas. My weakness remains the same, I tried to battle it this semester,

but it has fought back stronger than ever, which is crazy because I was doing so well up until this

point. It may be stress, overworking myself because of my job, or my horrible time management

but procrastination will always win. I had watched a video on how to stop procrastinating on

TikTok and it honestly was working for about a week, and then it went downhill from there.

Lastly, the most challenging aspect of this essay was figuring out how to word my

sentences. Abortion is not an easy subject to talk about and no matter what there will always be

people who are extremely biased. Conservatives have made the word pro-choice become “pro-

abortion”, when it just means that person wants to make their own choice. I had difficulty trying

to not be as biased and instead present research that supports women’s rights to their own bodies,

but I may not have done a good job on that. I love arguing and debating with others but it is

challenging doing so in writing.