Final Reflection

Sydney Dever

Jessica Hutchman

Lang 120

14 November 2013

Inquiry-ARC Reflection

            As I researched a few topics I was interested in using for my research paper, I jotted down a few topics that fall under the category of "rites of passage." I had ideas all over the place and was worried I wouldn't find enough information on a few of the topics I was interested in. This took lots of research as I tried to find decent reliable sources, which ended up with changing my mind over and over. Finally I found a topic, Quinceañera for Latina girls, which caught my mind and I was able to find a few different ways I could narrow down into a thesis statement. The final submission of this assignment followed a very long and sometimes tedious process in which I learned a lot from overall. The steps involved in the Inquiry-ARC process each played a specific role during this assignment, where I learned a lot from each step as I faced conflicts, made an effort to overcome them, and discovered ways I would be able to fix these things in the future.

            At the start of my research process, I wrote down a list of topics that I would potentially like to focus on for this assignment. After choosing a few topics that really caught my interest that I either felt strongly about or wanted to learn more about, I wrote ideas branching off of each one that would be helpful for when I decided to narrow down my research into one specific thesis. This is when I began the process of inquiring. As I thought about each topic and idea, I thought of different questions that would give my specific topic some sort of direction. At first when I began to research a few of my chosen topics, the information I found was fairly broad which led to my process of inquiry. At this point was when I started changing my mind about my chosen topic. When I had certain questions about my topics that I thought might be a good direction when shaping my thesis, the research I found didn't support the specific direction I wanted for my paper which would lead me  to either change my topic or rethink my questions. Finally, when I was researching Quinceañera in Latin America, I found lots of interesting informative sources. When it was time to choose a working thesis, I asked myself questions that I thought would form a good argument for my paper. This phase of application then led me to realize that rather than coming up with a thesis off the top  of my head, it was much more effective to draw a question from the research I have gathered. The questions I originally had to base my thesis around changed once I made new discoveries within my research. Whenever I was unable to answer the questions the way I had planned with the sources I had, I instead would look into my sources and come up with my question based on the source. This was helpful because it raised points that I was able to jot down for my outline, in which I either changed later on or added to as I got further down the writing process.

            The process of reflection apparent throughout my writing process. During each step I took, I questioned my research or the general direction of my thesis. I would find that at times I would get a bit off topic from my main points which led to going back and going through my research. Many times my reflection involved viewing each of my different sources and analyzing them and putting them together as a whole, rather than having various viewpoints in my paper. This is where I learned how to communicate my ideas better. One struggle I had at the beginning of the writing process was making point flow smoothly one after another. To avoid this, I gather more information from other sources rather than having all of the information for one point come from just one source.

            The process of writing this research paper was very tough at times, but overall I was able to view each of the conflicts I had and find out how to overcome them. I learned a lot about researching and analyzing the topics which will help me when doing research in the future. The Inquiry-ARC process is a very effective guideline for doing research papers such as this one. The process I took while working through this assignment definitely gave helped to give me some insight on how to do research in the future.