Karibella.W
Melissa.S
Composition II
29 January 2025
Research Portfolio
This is the last post of my Research Essay Portfolio. The fifth section here is a short reflective essay on the entire assignment and this was my favourite part. Not just because it seemed easy but because I love writing reflective essays! If you would like to read the other sections of the portfolio head to the bottom of this page and click on the links. I hope you enjoy reading!
V. Reflective Essay (350-550 words total; first person narrative)
When I first heard of this assignment, I thought of the classic easy comparisons such as dog/cats or winter/summer, but my mind quickly went to comparing and contrasting America and Ukraine. I knew a fair amount about both country’s cultures and histories and I knew I would learn more through writing about them. I saw this essay as an opportunity to raise awareness about Ukrainian history and also learn more about my own country as well as Ukraine. When I first went into this, I had a broad and general history of each country, but through the research, I got to learn alot more, especially through reading the constitutions.
For both sides of my topic, I had some ideas that were based on things I had read, but I hadn’t verified them yet. Reading sources and doing the research helped me solidify my opinions, facts, and ideas so I wouldn’t be saying false things. While working on this series of assignments, I found that I don’t so much enjoy researching, but I do like finding good sources. The hard part for me is finding many, many sources on a single subject because, at some point, there will be no more. I also learned that I need to manage time better and take breaks at the correct times.
Within this assignment, I had a lot of success with brainstorming. The ven diagram was super helpful and also note taking. During note-taking, I took way too long but it was actually very helpful to dig deeper into my sources. The hard part was finding enough good sources. After I found the Ukrainian constitution and the document about the meeting, I felt like I could hardly use more, so it was hard to keep thinking up new types of sources to search for. The hard thing with searching for sources is knowing what to type into the search engine. There are only so many variations of a subject one can make, so it is hard to imagine new angles to look at.
Next time I do this, I would definitely like to manage my time better and plan to do things earlier. I did too much last minute and I would not like to do that again. I would also learn more about my topic before brainstorming and making a research question so that I can more accurately talk about it. I would change this because when I write last minute, I didn’t have time to go back and edit to make things more fantastic. This caused less helpful versions to stay in the doc, but I have since edited some things.
