“The inside of the shell looks to me like a sore throat mouth,” is the sentence I wrote on paper eighteen years ago. It was my first day of an expository writing class and I was a freshman in college. Assorted objects were placed in the center of a table, around which twenty students and I sat around. Professor H asked us to describe the objects. What I saw was a seashell, a piece of driftwood and a black and white framed photo of an old man and a silver pocket watch. I wanted to sketch the still life in opposition to writing. I looked around me and observed all the students writing. At the end of our allotted ten minutes, I finally scribbled down my single sentence. Professor H asked us to read aloud what we had written, and as I listened to each student’s long prose, I was amazed. They drew the objects using words. When it was my turn I read,“The inside of the shell looks to me like a sore throat mouth.”
The class laughed as I blushed.
“Brilliant”, exclaimed Professor H with his Welsh accent.
I looked down at my single sentence with relief. That was the beginning of my understanding that everyone’s perception of something, may it be an inanimate object or experience is unique. The end of class he assigned us to write an essay about a personal experience, to be due the following week. He also asked us to bring copies to distribute to all the class.
The days prior to the due date, I recalled many experiences, but when I attempted to write them down on paper, I was not able to portray them successfully. The sharpest memories I could recall were incidents I was ashamed to write about, much less to share with the class. I feebly tried to write about a family trip to Arizona. When I read over what I had written, I was disa...
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...and waved her hands frantically and shook her head like a crazed Beatle fan.
As I continued to write, I once again became an eight-year-old child who sat with her older sister in the back of our Dad’s station wagon.
When I was finished and read the essay several weeks later, I understood how profoundly the experience of having a sister with disabilities has affected my life. That experience affects how I write and interpret others’ writing. If I had not written this particular essay, I am not sure how clear my understanding of this reality would be, even today. Today, as I pull out this essay, I see on the bottom H’s comment. He wrote,
“Once again Liza, with remarkable verbal precision and economy you evoke rich layers of meaning, feeling, and suggestion. There is not a word wasted in this piece-all comes over with the stated immediacy of a flash-photo.”
As I reflect it becomes clear to me that I enjoyed writing my junior year in high school. My English teacher Mr. Duckworth was a one of a kind teacher. His classroom was a normal classroom setting with the desk all line up behind one another. All of his students would face the white erase board that was located in the front of the room. He would typically sit at his desk leaning back in his chair giving us instructions on what was to be done in the class. As we sit in the class, all I can hear are my classmates laughing and joking around as he spoke. he would already have an essay topic on the board that was to the right of us that he could easily see from his desk. This was an everyday routine for all of his classes. As we begin to write, I noticed how different classmates of mine would get up to ask for help with their essay. The students who never asked for help usually would end up with a lot of red markings on their essays.
The first essay given in this course was about our whole composing process. This essay was hard to write about and I remember having several grammar mistakes. Sitting down and writing my process on paper,
Throughout the semester i only learned few new things but i did improve and solidify my skill of writing. Before my first year of college my skills have always undermined by other high school english teachers and with that came disappointing grades. I am writing this paper as a reflection of the semester and the progress i have made as a writer. I now understand many things that my high school teachers have done a poor job demonstrating and i am grateful that i decided to take my own route in my education instead of their syllabus. I entered the semester with anxiety that i would perform as i did before but i clearly outdid my own expectations by receiving top grades on my essays.
‘I am going to fail’ was the very first thought that crept into my mind on that very first day of class. Before I stepped into the classroom on the first day, I felt pretty good about my writing. I had done previously well in English, and didn’t think this class would be much of a challenge. This all changed on the first day of school, when my professor talked about the level of reading and writing expected for this class. I remember thinking ‘I don’t read, why couldn’t I have been born someone who likes to read?!’ Since this moment on the very first day of class, I have grown immensely through hard work. In this essay, I will explain what I have learned over the course of this class about myself, and about writing.
My sixteen week class in English 111. I was really nervous about this class. Because English has never been my strong point. This class has hard, but fun all at the same time. I learn a lot from this class. Meanwhile,the first day of class you handed a paper with a question on it. “The first thing I want to say to you who are students is that you must not think of being here to receive an education; instead, you will do much better to think of being here to claim one.” Even though putting my all in what I have learned, claiming my education with hard work because using the skills of the meal plan, as we write to different audiences and learning to be a Critically thinker as I start becoming a critically-Literate Citizenship.
As I shoved my notebook into my backpack, I heard my writing fellow murmur something about an essay. I wasn’t worried. After taking every Advanced Placement English class my high school offered, I felt equipped to handle a simple essay until received Dr. Carver’s email with the prompt and instructions. I blinked at the screen and rubbed my eyes; thinking I had misread the message, I read it again. I was supposed to have the essay finished in approximately 42 hours, but I had never written a decent essay in less than four days. I was in a state of panic; all of my ideas had evacuated my imagination leaving me with a painful case of writer’s block. To me, most of good writing is good editing and proper editing requires having a window to forget your writing before returning to it: a window that 42 hours just couldn’t provide.
“Wounmee, come back here.” I stopped on my way back to my desk, wondering what I did now. “Can you explain to me what you were intending to do here?” My teacher hands me back my essay with her eyebrows knitted together and her forehead crinkled in confusion. I took the paper and carefully inspected i. To my shock I had written some words in the first paragraph backwards and upside down. Embarrassed, I quickly hurried to my desk and changed the words back to normal. This time when I handed in my essay, she gave me a condescending look, making me feel crummy.
... the essay; everything was burned into my memory. I lay back down on my bed in disbelief. It all had felt so real. As I reached to pull the covers back over myself, I heard a something brush against paper, and metal rings pressed into my arm. Cautiously reaching with my hand, I pulled out a notebook, open to the first page, with a pen slipped in the spiral ring. On the page was written the following: “Thought you might need these! Can’t wait to read your essay!—ECHS.”
On February 21, 2016, I, Deputy John Arnold, went to 11747 West 105th Street South to assist another deputy in reference to a fight in progress.
This class has not been as challenging as I thought it would be. At first, I thought I couldn’t do it because there were so many papers, but after some time, I became adjusted to the fast pace. Once I was in the habit of turning a paper in every week, it started becoming straightforward. Plus, every paper that I have written has helped me to improve my punctuation and grammar. In the end, having to write a paper once a week wasn't as dreadful as I thought it would be.
What happens when one has an epiphany about something, years after it has happened? The essays “Some Notes on Attunement” by Zadie Smith and “Highway of Lost Girls” by Vanessa Veselka are personal essays that at first glance seem disconnected from each other as they touch on completely different subjects. However, it is evident that both have a common theme: realization. Zadie Smith comes to appreciate an artist named Joni Mitchell a decade after she first refers to her singing as “just noise” (Smith, 2012, p. 189). Vanessa Veselka hunts for more answers as she discovers the possible identity of the truck driver who threatened her life as an adolescent. Yet, it is important to note that the theme of realization covers a multitude of ideas expressed in these essays. Smith and Veselka in telling their individual stories, also utilize stylistic choices of their writing to enhance these ideas.
One of my main weaknesses in my writing was developing a strong introduction, particularly the thesis. English 1101 helped me realize that my thesis statements were too vague and never clearly answered the prompt. In the first essay of the process exhibit, I first started writing about the picture’s elements. My initial thesis started off as “At the instance of a click, the essence of a person can be described by the many pixels printed.” The assignment required that I describe my relationship with the people in the picture. My initial thesis was too vague
I believe it is important for any student who wants to do their best in a class to take a moment to evaluate their own work to determine the rate their writing is progressing and how they can continue to advance their writing. When I looked through my own work I asked myself “what have I learned this semester?” and “what do I still need to learn in order to improve my writing?”. Answering both these questions will help me with my last step of my self-evaluation, developing a plan to learn new skills.
I am by myself wearing my blue jeans and an old flannel shirt. It is cool outside but I decided to leave my gloves at home, feeling comfortable with my warm shirt and my sturdy boots.
Before entering this class, I thought I was prepared for college English. I had incredibly capable high school English teachers, who taught me detailed mechanics, creative writing style, and of course, the necessity of practicing good grammar. On entering this class, I quickly realized how little I had actually learned in my high school English classes. While most of my high school English essays I wrote were based on literature, the majority of the essays I wrote in this class have been more experiential and centered on real-life issues. I expected to be writing essays on books I read and articles I analyzed, but that was not the case. This class showed me in a variety of ways that things are often very different than they seem originally