Ira Sigman

Ms. Gilchrist

ENC 2135

10 April 2017

Research Paper Reflection

Throughout the writing of this paper, I constantly found myself at a loss of organization.

It was very difficult for me to funnel all my ideas onto paper in a way that made sense. The broad

scope of my research question was in part responsible for this difficulty. With so many facets to

my complex answer it was hard to support all my assertions and ideas in the constraints of this

paper. A personal difficulty I had was writing and formatting in MLA style which is was new to

me. The specificity of everything between the header and the works cited must be precise or else

the format is not followed.

On the other hand, I enjoyed doing research and reading more on a topic on which I am

very interested. Many of the more technical parts of my research did not get included in the

paper for simplicitys sake but did contribute to my synthesis and understanding of the topic.

More on synthesis, I found it easy to come to logical conclusions based on my evidence and that

is attributed to how I pulled quotes and paraphrased. I started out with nothing but the evidence

and wrote around it. Then I trimmed down the evidence to only what was necessary, and

paraphrased much of what could be said in less words. It is important for me to stay pithy when

navigating a topic where it is easy to lose readers.

In the editing process, I went through two major overhauls. The first was a logic check

and evidence edit which happened over spring break. This is when I dove into some of my

sources which I had only previously skimmed. The second occurred after the final conference on
the paper in which many formatting and stylistic errors were brought to my attention. I also took

the liberty of trimming down the unnecessary evidence and synthesis in favor of assertions that

would support my newly clarified thesis and answer to my research question.

The reflections we wrote in class at first helped me realize that I was not deep enough in

my topic to provide an adequate answer to my question. They also helped me realize I would

need help in formatting and organization which I got from the writing center and from my sister

who just graduated with an English major from Penn State. The help I received was essential in

producing a cohesive final product. I found my editing time to be much more productive than my

writing time throughout the process. I always came away after editing with a better product as

opposed to writing from which I would have a much longer and confusing product.

This is by far the longest paper I have written and I would not consider myself a writer by

any means but I feel like I have learned a lot throughout the past month in terms of what it takes

to write informatively which Im sure will always be an important skill for me to have.