Monday, February 19, 2018
New Semester Means New Essays
Today our first essay of my second semester of college was due. For many of my peers English and writing essays is extremely easy and I can agree with them in some ways except when it comes to essays. For me I tend to struggle on them. I worry too much about if everything in the paragraph is making sense and if its formatted and each paragraph contains what the teacher wants or the rubric. I sit and think about how long an essay should take and how good of an essay I should be able to write and what concrete details, examples, and ideas I can come up with to add to the essay. Ive always got feedback on my essays that I'm a bit blurry and certain sentences stated in my essay disconnect from the topic and what not. I've pretty much gotten bad feedback from some of my peers and teachers. This is when I started realizing that I put a bit too much thought into the essay and trying to make it sound extremely scholastic (not saying that's a bad thing to do). About a week ago my English professor assigned us and essay about a book were reading and we had to write an essay on it (the rough draft). It took me about an hour and a half to complete the essay because I wrote it out on a piece of paper first and got my ideas and jotted them down then I typed it up. I felt like I did a good or acceptable job on the essay but was waiting to see what my peers would say. We switched essays and did a peer edit and I actually got positive feedback today, although I'm positive there's something I could have done better or structured a certain paragraph out a different way I felt better and more confident about writing essays. I know I have A LOT to work on to make my essays way better and scholastic. I hope this semester I can improve my writing skills and become a better writer and not have to lack confidence in that area of my school work.
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I like how you mentioned that you used to spend a lot of time trying to make your essays sound extremely scholastic because I have done before and I believe everyone has done that at one time or another. I have noticed in recent years that a lot of people, and even professors, just want writing to be more blunt and not too sophisticated. It is easier to understand and makes the essay flow.
ReplyDeleteI feel like we have all had this problem at some point! Writing can be difficult. I've always enjoyed writing and something that always helps me is imagining myself having a conversation in my head. When you talk you don't really worry if what you are saying makes sense you just kind of know it is. So that's what I do, I think of myself having a conversation with a sophisticated someone while having tea (not kidding sadly).
ReplyDeleteI can relate to this because I also have trouble writing essays a lot of the time! I think we tend to overthink the essay and that is why for me personally, I always procrastinate on my essays and do them so last minute.
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