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Diego Torres

Melissa Castro

ENGL 1302 – 281

10 February 2024

Reflection Essay 1

I learned a strategy in 1301 that eliminated my writers block problem, which was first

drafts are always the “Shitty First Drafts”. Because of this, I’d pour all my ideas onto the first

paper without trying to structure my paragraphs yet, since it’s easier to see what’s going on and

the flow I’m trying to create. As soon as I’m done, I’m able to see what flow I have and the

overall structure I created, which also opens the opportunity to reconstruct my introduction and

start following the flow of my essay.

The format I’m used to was working through two drafts before the final draft, so I had a

longevity strategy that worked out well, but for this class it was only one draft and one final

draft. It didn’t take long for me to get used to it, but I might’ve made a couple mistakes for this

first one that for sure I’ll fix for the next one.

I learned how to properly use APA for my essay, and I have my Peer Review Buddy to

thank for that. Almost my entire school life I’ve always used MLA format for every single essay,

so this was a first-time experience which I enjoyed. It felt difficult at first since I had to go back

so many times to fix minor details on my citations, and other spots I forgot to citate. I didn’t get

the best grade for the first essay but it’s a first-time experience, it’s bound to get better.
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The MLA format is used more in my other classes than the APA format I used for the first essay,

so I don’t think APA will be useful for my classes, but it may be useful for my career which is

Forensic Psychology whenever I need to make a research paper. For the rest of my classes, they

mainly use the simple MLA format which I like since it’s easy and it seems more organized to

leave all the citations for the end instead of putting them throughout the paper.

The creation of an experiment with outside research helps me improve my writing by improving

my research skills. With this first essay, even though I got the wrong sources, a skill that I

improved is thoroughly going through the information and taking notes to help write my essay

and include those APA citations.

After reading the comments from my peer-reviewed buddy, she brought up how well I include

details for my experiment throughout the essay and felt really informative towards the end, and

she really liked my introduction and thought it was well-written. She also enjoyed my conclusion

and said “...the conclusion that perfectly encapsulates the essay.” which is a huge

accomplishment for me since I took a while figuring out how I wanted to end my essay. I used

the wrong pronouns throughout the essay which affected the quality a lot. One of my biggest

weaknesses that she brought up was using too many pronouns and suggested to figure out a way

to structure my sentences without using too much “I” or “we”.

The most challenging aspect of this essay was figuring out how to write the paragraphs without

using first person pronouns since that is what I’m used to. I had to use an entirely different

approach to the essay which was a first-time experience for me. The least challenging part was

writing the introduction since in 1301 I had a lot of practice on figuring out the structure of the

first paragraph. Even though I made a mistake and didn’t include a clear claim but later added
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clarity in my conclusion, I didn’t really struggle with it in the beginning. Overall, this essay was

challenging but it felt good to go through the mistakes and learn.