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Zachary Ball

English 111

Lindsay Drumm

Critical Reflection

August 3, 2014


Every paper that we write has a certain style, a unique personal viewpoint that is
different from one another. Think of it as a creative process that requires a certain
structure depending on the topic and type of paper. Whether you are writing a poem or
a research paper, there are various stages that you will work through to create a final
draft. What makes writing so interesting is that there is really no right or wrong way to
start and finish a paper which leaves it completely up to you in choosing the creative
process you are going to use. Dont get me wrong, there are plenty of rules and
methods that require an exact format, but in general, a paper can be whatever you
make it out to be.
I am a student in Lindsay Drumms English 111 college course closing in on the
end of the semester and completed the final draft of the AMS paper. As a group, we
quickly learned many different writing styles that we needed to accomplish certain
writing techniques that built up knowledge for the final paper. Having a poor attitude
going into week one, I started to improve my writing skills which helped me realize I
wasn't such a terrible writer. I started grasping onto new ideas giving me a whole new


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perspective on academic writing. The end of the semester was inching closer as I
prepared myself to start the final paper.
The academic topic that I choose to research and write on was prescription drug
abuse in college. My intended audience was in fact the same age bracket as me and it
intrigued me to write about it. The idea sunk into my head knowing that this is a
common problem throughout many universities in the United States and more
importantly, nationwide. My girlfriend is currently in her Masters program focusing on
counseling and thought it was something I could find tons of research on. Knowing that
finding sources would be easy and I would have an abundance of information on it, I
chose that niche. It was rather easy brainstorming a clear and arguable thesis for the
introduction paragraph. I made sure to problematize the issue and then created my
content around that.
Finding sources was actually a fun stage in writing this paper. I learned so much
about an uprising epidemic on college campuses. Finding credible authors was simple
due to the abundance of academic journals I was finding on the proquest database. I
made sure to grab more than needed amount of sources to minimize the struggle of
finding more later on. What made them credible was mainly the experiments and
surveys they held in the mass public of major universities. They too problematized a
certain issue and reflected on other authors writings as well.
The structure of the paper was a very important part in my writing process. I
learned about two different methods to synthesize and analyze between different
sources. I used a combination of both techniques to connect the authors together
viewing the differences and similarities. The flow of my writing became noticeably better


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when structuring the paper using the rubric and required format for a multi-source
essay. The rough draft and instructor draft gave me a better insight of how to structure
my paper after seeing red pen throughout my paper. The 1-on-1 conference with
Lindsay helped answer all of my questions that helped improve my paper dramatically.
I used a unique introduction that grabbed the attention of college students and
kept them hooked with interesting statistics and supporting data that involved their
interest. I accomplished this through using topic sentences that appealed to college
kids. I covered main points such as; health and academic problems associated with
prescription drug abuse, and illegal market that is created from the buying and selling of
pills that can lead to serious jail time and bad habits.
Each draft had a main structure feature to fix or to improve. I made sure consider
all and any feedback that was given to me after the instructor draft was handed back. I
took that constructive criticism and improved the quality of my paper through many
revisions. The one thing I was having trouble with was synthesizing and expanding on
why the abuse of pills was a problem. I had solid information but needed the flow of the
paper to improve before handing in my final draft.
The ultimate and end goal of the paper was to correctly use the methods and
techniques required in the rubric and to use learned knowledge from the two previous
papers. Group activities and classroom discussion were important steps in writing this
final paper. A few things to improve on for my future writings is to first not procrastinate
so much, and to be more open minded on certain topics. This allows for a paper to
consider both sides and create an overall better reading experience for your audience.




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1. Why did you pick this topic? How did you decide on your thesis?

2. How did you find your sources? What made them credible?

3. How did you decide to structure the paper?


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4. What main points did you discuss to support your thesis?

5. Who was your intended audience?

6. How did you attempt to reach them? How did you hook them in?

7. What did you revise between drafts? How did you focus your attention? How did the revisions
help with the quality of paper?