Assignment #2
My psychology tutor and I were talking about my English class one day, and I was telling her how I had to start to write my opinion editorial. We brainstormed ideas and I came up with the idea of having a shorter school year following longer class periods. My creative juices were flowing from then on; thinking about what alternatives it brings and the benefits it carries. Following this process, I wrote in my previous blog my outline and my blueprints to which I would base off my ideas from. I felt like I could provide a lot of information from my thesis and the ideas that came with it.
I wrote my first draft with anticipation and earnest, but was hesitant with my argument. I did not think it was strong enough. There are a lot of road blocks in my argument that hit me head on. I had a lot of work to do. Personally, I feel that I have good organizational skills and I can write an essay well. It's my argument and my back-up evidence that gets to me. Usually, arguing isn't too hard for a girl. But in this instance, I had some troubles.
Which then brings me to peer editing. I loved it. My classmates can be honest and truthful and tell me my flaws, graciously. Their views opened up to new ideas and better improved my essay. They found little errors that would have docked me points, and extreme errors that I would have been in real trouble. Peer editing helps us to help each other and work with everyone. Next, on Friday I scurried to the Jesse Knight Building and got tons of advice from Mr. Keeley. I really like this exercise that we signed up to do. I never got this type of help in high school, and it reassures me when my professor, the grader, helps me out and reorganizes my essay. I took his critique and made all the corrections, minute and enormous, and went to work. I will be sure to visit the writing center this week to make sure I got it right. It would be way hard to have a perfect paper, but with all of this help behind me I know I am better off where I was before.
I learned a lot from writing my first collegiate paper. There are many differences between high school papers and college papers. High school papers are clearly not that much in length. And the teachers didn't expect that much out of me and my classmates when I wrote papers. The list goes on. Here, I have learned to write more than one draft and to take criticism from my peers. Usually in high school, I could just let my ideas fall onto the paper, put it all together and poof-my essay. It normally worked out fine then. But now as I am in college, that strategy is long gone. I definitely could not just type up a final draft and hope for the best here. I've learned to put all my effort in every paragraph, sentence, word. I've learned the S.T.A.R. acronym from Mr. Keeley. I've learned that your first draft is definitely not your best draft. I've learned that the work that I put into it is the grade I will get.
