#10 Reflection on my Research Paper

This paper has been one of the longest papers I can remember writing so far in my education. It's been a long process, but I'm glad it's over and that I pulled through with a successful paper. 

I think my favorite part of the writing process was interviewing my mother and aunt about their past experiences learning English. I will remember the conversation I had with my mother as a great and memorable experience. I got the chance to learn much about my mother's past and her life growing up. Details about her life that I knew in general or vaguely became more specific and concrete. I got to learn all about her school days, how good she was at English when she was a child, and how her skills came in handy when visitors from America came to visit and stay in her home while researching their family histories. I also learned that she went to junior college and studied English and French, something I never knew about my mother. She told me about a year she spent as a fifteen-year-old in an American High School in Utah, just to see what it was like. She and I had a great time talking about her past and learning from it. 

I was also glad to get the chance to call my Aunt who lives in Denmark, something I haven't made the time to do in quite a while. We had a great time catching up and learning about her history as well. It was nice to hear how she was doing and all about how her and her son are still learning English. I'm glad she still has excellent English and that we can still have great conversation. 

I think the idea behind this paper was interesting, to take a story from our family history and use it as a launch pad for research. At first I was confused and somewhat frustrated when my ideas weren't very concrete and I was struggling to find resources. I'm glad we had the chance to learn how to use the library's search engine to find academic sources, but the day in the library when we were supposed to find family history material was a bit frustrating and confusing, since my paper did not require those materials and only dealt with my mother's generation. Other than that, the pacing of due dates for sources, rough drafts, etc. was very helpful in keeping me on track and prevented me from trying to do it all the week before. Even though more due dates consistently stressed me out, it was worth it in the end.

The paper was great! I'm proud of it.