Critical Reflection for Exploratory Essay

I thought I used a decent amount of time to write my first rough draft which was helpful because that s different than how I normally attack essays. Normally, I will just try to get my ideas down on paper, but I was able to organize my ideas better after receiving some clarification about the essay from our instructor. I looked in the book and used the format of the example essay to guide my own writing that helped me grasp the idea and purpose of the whole paper, and although I understood the paper and spent time writing it, that does not mean that it came out perfect. I found my essay had lots of repetition in the second and third paragraphs because I did not know what else to add in order to meet the same standards as the second paragraph. I think that going more in depth and reading more from my sources will help me analyze and draw relevance to the paper. This will help decrease some of my repetition and give more concrete words and phrases that add depth to the essay instead of circling back around to familiar ideas. I also found it hard to form a good question after my first paragraph. I had already done an annotated bibliography so I already knew a lot about the topic so instead, I tried to put myself in a novice’s shoes and think about what questions they would ask next. Although this helped, I felt that the question and focus of my research in the third paragraph could go after the introductory because it speaks on the definitions and basic understanding that is necessary for the reader. In the end, I think that reorganizing my essay will make it much better along with looking back through the example essay in order to limit my repetition and make sure I hit all the necessary points.