Reflection

Nick Franze                                                                                                                          12-1-15

                                                       

Research Reflection

Through the many argues years of school, there has always been my strong suits and weaknesses.  One of those weaknesses has been English, until I took this class.  In the beginning of the course was very frightening due to the unknown, and by unknown I mean the amount of essays I was going to have to write.  I was constantly thinking about the Cliché College thought when entering my English class “How am I going to write an essay every day and how many research papers am I going to write?”  There were some other things on my mind as well; those were what goals I had for myself this semester.  Besides only goals just making it out of this class alive was going to be challenge but hopefully I could conquer this daring task.

 During this course which was a 15 week one I did accomplish multiple goals I had set for myself in the beginning of the semester.  There was a lot of additional stuff that I didn’t even know about writing wise and believe it benefited my writing immensely.  One goal is still sort of evading perfection for me is the in text citation format.  The reason being is sometimes I’m not sure how much of what I take from the source is considered plagiarism, which then causes me to want to cite it all and that’s a very repetitive thing to have to consistently read.  With more practice and more English classes to come, I shall concur my goal and become a more efficient writer.

      Now as far as my research paper(s) that I thought I would have to write, it went very well research wise.  A lot was learned about the controversial Gun Control laws and how much it has affected American lives. Ongoing arguments are formed daily and even debated over.  My personal stand point on said topic was anti-gun control and how the gun laws are so different everywhere. What was learned from researching was what little is being done to control the mentally ill or violent criminals from obtaining gun permits.  Facts on both sides of the arguments were already known to me making writing this paper fairly easy but there was much more info to learn about the topic that also made it that much more interesting.  The best part about taking time out of my day to write this paper wasn’t the hours of research trying to find articles, but the things that were learned about through reading many different articles. 

All of the articles talked not only about gun control laws, but got more specific in certain arguments and percentages affiliated with guns and the gun use issues.  It’s a very controversial issue gun control, many people disapprove and some find it does so much for our country.  So after constructing the format and how I was going to approach what paragraph was going to be talked about certain topics, I began to see elements of writing I learned from class beginning to flourish my paper.  It not only made my paper more interesting to read but allowed for information to be more professionally discussed.  Computer research has evolved from simple searches; more advanced searching techniques which allows my paper to be more interesting.  My grader will defiantly find my introduction and a few of my facts about my topic very interesting (hopefully). 

The makeup of the paper took a lot of work, in the fact that the research process was long and very, very difficult.  Not difficult so much with finding sites, but more what sites I was going to use as well as the information inside.  The topic of control was a wide variety issue and changed every day with another mass shooting or child shooting parent accidentally.  The consistent change in controversies had led my paper in so many different directions that it might not be so totally what was asked of or consistent to my actual thesis.  So many things have happened when writing this paper mass shooting, school shootings, and other non-talked about as much issues accidental shootings, hunting accidents that making sure to find articles based on one thought was a challenge. 

Research papers aren’t meant to be an easy accomplishment, it’s a process to help show how well your research is as well as how well you can put all of those events or facts all together.  Some tips to help out with writing could be more direct in your research and by that I mean don’t use your broad topic as a topic search.  If you’re trying to talk about specific events affiliated with your topic that match your thesis, then those are more helpful and will help your writing.  The research paper was a great thing to experience as well as get a grade back to help show what can be improved next time in my writing.