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Hector Lopez

Hanan Saadi

Engl 1302

06/10/2023

Reflective Essay #2

Cigarettes and e-cigarettes have been an uprising debate that has been happening for

years. Essay one allowed me to see the overall breakdown of which one is Safer and why. I used

a lot of the information from Essay 1 to see why different countries have different viewpoints in

this debate. Even though Essay 1 was mainly based on America’s opinions, it still gave me a

starting point. Even though essay one was a huge help in writing essay two for various reasons,

my chemistry class was a massive help in essay two. There are so many formulas and chemicals

used in e-cigarettes that would have been extremely difficult to understand if I hadn’t taken

chemistry last fall semester.

Although essay one gave me a starting point, I couldn’t use a lot of the information in

essay two because the whole point of essay two was to see the various opinions of different

countries, and sadly essay one only focused on America’s research. For example, in essay one, I

wrote about all the chemicals they used in America’s e-cigarettes and why they were harmful for

the body. I couldn’t put all this information in essay two because not all the countries I used

released the chemicals they mixed into e-cigarettes to sell them better. Chemistry was a great

help for this class essay, but a class that couldn’t help me at all was history. Even though learning

the history of cigarettes and e-cigarettes was necessary, I focused more on the present downsides

than the past ones. Focusing on the past could be required, but their history wasn’t essential in

these essays.
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Various classes helped me with these essays or didn’t help me at all, but writing this

essay also helped me in other courses. For example, writing an annotated bibliography. English

wasn’t the only course I needed to learn to write an annotated bibliography. In my univ 1302

class, I was expected to write an annotated bibliography, and this essay gave me an easy example

to follow. I already knew what information to write down, what not to put, and in what order to

put the data. Without this essay, it would have been 10x harder to write. This essay gave me a

quick and easy breakdown of what to do. Even though writing an annotated bibliography was

crucial for univ 1302, I wouldn’t need to know how to write one for History 1302. Even though

you do need to write essays, half the time, your professor makes you use history books that you

have been reading for the whole semester, so there’s no need to write a breakdown of the book.

Although it may seem hard to believe annotated bibliographies are considered a universal

tool. Writing my annotated bibliography gave me an easy and clear picture of what each article

was about. It made it 10x easier to write essay two because I could constantly go back and check

what each piece was about without having to reread it. Learning how to write an annotated

bibliography will help me in the future because any time I have to write a research paper for

English, biology, or even univ, I’ll have a clear picture of how to summarize each article to make

the writing process more manageable.

Writing essays has always come easily to me hence why the idea of an annotated

bibliography came quickly, but of course, like any writer, I wasn’t perfect. I had some strengths

and weaknesses that gradually changed throughout my two essays. Some strengths my peers

mentioned were that I was extremely detailed, my vocabulary was always top tier, and my

paragraphs flowed smoothly. Some weaknesses included that sometimes my paragraphs were too

long, I would forget to cite my work throughout the essay, and I rarely mentioned any authors. I
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was putting information on a paper without any background of where I was getting it. These

were my weaknesses and strengths for Essay 2, but the ones from Essay 1 were quite different.

For example, for essay one, my peers constantly mentioned how in essay one it was almost as if I

was putting blocks of information down without any flow throughout the paragraphs. Any

feedback from my peers from essay one helped me improve essay two.

Surprisingly, after all the feedback from my peers, I realized the most challenging part of

this unit was finding different viewpoints on my topic. My topic was extensive and known, so

many countries, researchers, and even scientists had very similar opinions, so when it came

down to essay number two, I struggled with it. This small fact came out a lot when my

classmates and professor reviewed my essay. Even though this unit was a little challenging, I

struggled the least in picking out my topic. I already knew what I wanted to write in this paper; I

needed to find all the sources.