For all of middle school, I felt that a writing assignment was the teachers’ form of torture. Unfortunately, this torture led me to develop a habit of turning my essays in as quickly as possible. I would not edit my essays. I would not reread my essays. Honestly I remember a few times when I did not even finish an essay before turning it in because I wanted the torture to end. I even saved a note that I received from my 8th grade teacher after having turned in a most abominable essay. The note read as follows: “M.E — I wish I had read this essay before writing your Galloway recommendation,” and while I know you won’t believe me, I actually found this note very funny. Besides, why would I waste my energy being upset about something that was already set in stone?
If my middle school self read one of my current papers, she would stare blankly in awe and claim that I was destined to become an author. However, I have had to overcome many hurdles to get to this point, and while I have advanced my skills immensely, I still continue to struggle with problems that plague my writing. The thing I struggle with most is word count. When I tell people my word count for an assignment, they usually get mad at me for complaining. They don't understand why I would be mad that I have written too much when most people struggle with writing enough. Unfortunately, I am not usually over the word count because of an abundance of knowledge on the topic. It is instead because I tend to fill my essays with fluff and unnecessary sentences. My first draft of my personal story “Christmas 2009: The day I became an adult” was 1,738 words, and, with the help of Ms. Crowell, I was able to bring it down to 1,393 words. For our last full essay, Night, however, I was able to bring my essay from 1,635 words to 1,121 words. While I did have some help, I completed this task much more on my own than I did my original personal essay. At first I could not find clear cut evidence of how my papers were eventually making it under the word limit, but I realized that during the course of this year the art of revisioning somehow clicked in my brain. When you look at my Night essay’s first rough draft, the edits look as though it would actually increase my word count, however, along the way I learned how to recognize the difference between good writing and writing that strayed from the thesis’s main idea. In the the second edit I decided to take out an entire point because I noticed that it did not fit well with the essay's main idea. Throughout the year, I have developed and practiced a form of editing that I had never even tried before. I pushed through the discomfort of editing and came up with a style of editing that worked best for me. The first thing I do after I have finished my rough draft is highlight all of the “to be” verbs on my paper. Then I turn those passive sentences into active sentences and take out as many of the “to be” verbs as I can. Next I print out two full copies of my essay. On one copy, I focus solely on commas, my biggest enemy. Each sentence gets marked and divided up into independent and dependent clauses, which I then use to help me go through each sentence and either verify the use of all the commas or add any commas that I feel are missing. The second copy is used for rewording ineloquent sentences and adding colorful words in hopes that this will lead to a lower word count. The finishing touch is to have my friend Emma read over and check for any last mistakes and to ask Ms. Crowell as many questions as I can before she reaches her breaking point. While I have made great strides in my writing abilities, I still feel that the biggest thing I need to work on is my confidence in my own edits. I often feel like the edits I make on my own essays make them worse instead of better, and while this year has strengthened my faith in my own editing skills I need to continue gaining confidence until I can edit an essay all on my own and feel proud of the work I have completed. With this portfolio I will not only show how I have advanced as a writer, but will also use this project to continue to build up my own confidence by completing the work with no extra editing help. This portfolio is an authentic example of my true writing abilities. |
note from my 8th grade english teacher
My college essay and the first paper I ever wrote this year that was within the word count on the rough draft!
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