Final Exam Essay

Bustamante 1

Final Exam Essay

Samira Bustamante
Montgomery College

Final Exam Essay

Bustamante 2

In English 102, I have written 4 essays which include the argument analysis, definition,
casual and research essay. All of the first three essays were preparing me to write the research
essay. I got a D on my research essay, which was lower than I expected. I thought I would get at
least a C because I actually worked on my research essay a bit harder than the previous essays. I
did make many errors in my paper. The errors that I had in my research paper were major and
ended up costing me my grade. I did average on style & tone and grammar, which I usually do
okay on. My research essay turned out problematic due to my format, organization and content.
My topic this entire semester was animal captivity. Animal captivity in general was a
good topic and I do not regret choosing it. Animal captivity was very broad, so I always had the
chance to talk about the differences between where animals are held captive. Some places were
the zoo, theme parks like SeaWorld, and the circus. For my research essay, I decided to narrow
down the choices to circuses with a proposal to ban animals from performing in circuses. I chose
my topic because I am very passionate about animals and how they do not receive respect in the
entertainment world. Circuses especially treat animals horribly and act in such a malicious way
towards them. In my research paper, I went in depth about the problems that underline animals in
circuses. Some examples I talked about were the mistreatment/abuse the animals were receiving,
the threats to humans that could be possible by animals being in a circus, and how animals in
circuses can develop psychological and physical issues from being held captive in a circus.
Before I chose my topic, I did not fully take into account the research potential/problems my
topic posed. I knew that there were would be many sources that would support my proposition,
but I did not think about what the opposing arguments would be. I did not think about what the
opposing arguments would because I do not even consider them real arguments to begin with.
For example, in my essay, many people claim that circuses provide great knowledge for the

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young kids that are attending. Kids can learn about the animals, and circus life, but I do not find
that truthful. I do not find that argument truthful because the claims that the circus would have
about the animas are not representing animals in their natural habitat/ environment.
For my research paper, I had trouble finding very reliable sources. I believe my poor
grade on this essay had a lot to do with me not finding that many good sources. I believe if I had
better sources then I would have made my proposal stronger and more credible. I also believe
my content would have improved a lot and looking back at my research paper, I did the worst on
my content. My research decisions reflected on the circus and how they treat animals. When I
would go on raptor search to find all scholarly articles and sources, I would most times come up
short. I did also try ebsohost, project muse, databases by subject, any I believe some more that I
am forgetting. Out of all of these databases, I felt like raptor search gave more sources to choose
from. I would try many times with different phrases. Some phrases I would try were, animals
and circuses or animals in circus or animals in circus effects. A lot of sources came up, but
not many that I could have used to my advantage and to make my proposal stronger. One topic
that I really could not find on any scholar website was the solutions to animals in circuses. I did
find many in the web that were .org or .gov, but I feel like a scholarly article would have given
me more of an edge. Even the ones that I did find on the web did not really state a solution, they
mostly stated the problems that were caused by the circus and it was kind of up to me to decide
how those problems can be turned into solutions. I also could not find any sites or sources that
had to do with being in favor of animals in circuses. I did find an interview with a Ringling Bors,
and Barum & Bailey general manager that was a .com website. I was very iffy about using this as
a source because I do not believe it was very credible because it was coming from a .com
website and the interview was with a general manager. I knew the interview was going to be

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biased, but I did not have much to choose from. I ended up using it in my research essay because
it supported my position about how the circus claims that their animals are happy and in good
hands. I then rebutted with the proof of how abused and mistreated their animals get.
My working process did not end up benefitting me. I did not want to rush with this essay,
so I took my time and only wrote about 2 pages a day. I usually never do this. For all my other
essays, I crammed them all in a day or two before they were due and still managed to get a better
grade on them than this research essay. I had difficulties with my content and organizing and
format. I did not organize my paragraphs well. I started out with my intro, then went into the
problems for the next paragraph, and had a paragraph for each problem/point. Then for my
solution, I did not have a paragraph for each solution. I only had one solution, which was to end
animals in circuses, so I only had one paragraph for my solution. My solution was too
underdeveloped and I believe it was due to me not organizing my essay properly. I did have my
intro, and the paragraph defining the problem, after that it all went downhill. I also did not have a
separate paragraph all about refuting the opposition. Instead, I would list the problems, and the
opposing side, then rebut all in the same paragraph. I also believe if I organized my essay better
than I would have had better content and format in my essay. My content would have had more
support and would have been narrower. My format would also have been more clear and
organized. I believe because I did so bad at organizing and organizing has to do with pretty much
every other category, that it was like a domino effect and made everything else in my essay sink.
I did pretty average on my style and tone, I scored a 7. I usually never think about the style and
tone for my essays, so I believe that could be why I did average. I usually just have the mentality
that only my teacher I going to read my essay. I did pretty well on my grammar and scored and 8.

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I think I could do better if I did not use it so much or have comma splices or sentence
fragments. I also believe if I proofread more meticulously, I would have scored better on overall.
All in all, I do not regret choosing my topic. I feel like writing my research paper, getting
a poor grade on it, and revising has made me a better writer. I know now that I must know how
to organize, format and include more content in my essay. All of the previous mistakes I made
could have been easily fixed and I know understand why. In future assignment, I will try to also
find better sources because the ones that I used in my research argument did not benefit me
much. If I had better sources than I could have done better. If I had to grade my research process
itself, I would give myself a B. I do not feel like I did horrible with my research experience
because I did learn a lot from it, but I feel like there is still room for improvement.