Reflection

Cole Haggerty
Eng 102
4/25/2020

This semester in English 102 has really helped to improve my writing dramastically. This class

really made me become a stronger writer in many ways. By starting off with the Exploratory

essay it allowed me to research and choose a topic that I was important to me. This allowed me

to find something that I was passionate about, by doing this it was easier to express my ideas

and thoughts rather than writing about a topic that I wasn't interested in. Then the next step was

doing the annotated bibliography, which showed me new ways to find strong and reliable

sources that I would have never thought to use. Finally the last step was to do the actual

research paper that put everything together which showed me the improvement in myt writing

as a whole.

The first paper we had to write was an exploratory essay which was to find a certain

topic that was important to you. I chose social media because of the fact that I and many others

are always using it and how it has become in our daily lives. I wanted to show the impacts it had

on people as well as myself. Being able to choose a topic we were interested in made it much

easier to write because I already had some knowledge about the topic which made it easier for

me to organize my thoughts and ideas. This was unlike my other English classes where they

would assign a topic which I usually had no previous knowledge and or interest in. This just

made writing a burden and I had no passion and it showed in my writing because I did the bare

minimum just to get a grade rather than trying to defend or refute something I actually cared

about.

After writing the exploratory essay we had to do an annotated bibliography. I had never

done this but after doing one i think it was what made my writing go to the next level. This made
my topic which was somewhat broader more precise, and focused on a smaller topic. My topic

at first was Social media in general which has so many different smaller topics that I could focus

on. I then decided to choose marketing through social media but focusing on marketing through

youtube. This makes it easier to find sources that are specific to that topic and something that I

can actually argue about. After focusing on my topic I had to find strong sources to support it

and by doing the labs in the library it showed many tons of different databases that would show

me articles and other types of sources that I would never have found before. These databases

would give me specific sources to marketing through youtube and they were strong sources and

reliable as well. Before I wouldn't really know if my sources were strong I would just think they

were strong if they came from popular news sites. Now I look to see if there are biases

throughout the sources and try to find neutral sources that provide evidence that can support my

ideas.

Finally we had to write our actual research essay which brings together everything we

did in the class. This was an easy essay to write because the two previous assignments really

set up me up perfectly to organise and write. The annotated bibliography gave me all the

sources I needed to write and by having those strong sources it made it easy to synthesize my

points. Also by narrowing my topic to a specific topic it allowed me to create a strong thesis.

Coming up with a strong thesis was always hard for me because the topics I wrote about were

too broad too and had a good thesis that can be argued for or against. The steps leading up to

the research essay really helped organize my paper better, by having a strong thesis, transitions

into the next paragraph and having strong sources to analyze made my purpose and ideas

make better sense for the audience to point out and understand.

Overall this year has made my writing significantly better and makes writing more

enjoyable. It has set me up to be successful for my classes later on in my college path, as well

in my life. There are still things that I need to work on like giving myself more time to organize
and write, this is still one of my biggest flaws that I have and if I can improve on it it will really

make my writing better. I had a terrific time taking Eng 102 and it has really helped me develop

as a writer and also as a student, which can also help me in other classes and not just english

classes.