Research Critical Analysis Reflection/Self-Assessment

While I was in the process of completing this assignment, I knew that I wanted my research paper to focus on the theme of embodiment. My exigence behind choosing this prompt was that I wanted to gain a better idea of how the female body is perceived by others and how societal standards play a major role in determining one’s beauty. Also, I wanted my paper to be based on the novel Soon I Will Be Invincible because I felt like I could relate to the superhero, Fatale. Throughout this assignment, I had to conduct many types of research surrounding the anatomy of a female body and societal definition of beauty in order to fully understand the psychological impact of being an outcast. As a result, I was able to create a thesis that would allow me to understand the struggles that Fatale faced by being a half-human cyborg.

As previously mentioned, I knew from the beginning that I wanted to research the prompt about embodiment. Also, I knew that many of my classmates did not want to write about the book because it would require them to read the novel in its entirety. Thus, this would cause my paper to be a little bit more interesting to read. Before I started my paper, I was a little worried that I would not finish the book in time. However, I was able to accomplish this by closely skimming the rest of the book and highlighting sentences that may be helpful when I began to write the paper.

The first place I went wrong when I started writing the paper was not creating an outline. Normally, creating an outline would be the first thing I do. But because I did not, my thoughts were all over the place. Furthermore, since I had no idea of how to structure my paper, I became very overwhelmed which led me to procrastinate. Therefore, I ended up missing the deadline for draft one and two.

When I realized that I needed an outlined I created one and it made the writing process a whole lot easier. In the end, I was able to sit down and write my paper in two days. With the outline that I created, I knew that body paragraph first would be given an overview of Erik Erikson’s Theory of Development, while the second would be where I introduced Fatale and her perception of her body image, the third would tie in the psychological theory and her isolation and so on. Additionally, I made sure that I included other female superheroes and explained how some of their body features differs from Fatale’s. Also, with the help Ms. Poe I was able to connect Fatale to another cyborg, Major Motoko. During the research portion, I found many other scholarly articles that may have been useful, but I did not use them because the syntax was very difficult to follow.

Overall, even though I faced many setbacks while I was completing this assignment. I persevered on because I knew that this is a very important paper. But most importantly, the feedback from my peer review group made me realized that my paper was interesting and that I was on the right track. Next time, I will make sure that an outline is the first thing I do because by doing so it allows my paper to flow better and sound coherent.

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