Having an English class in school can be really
helpful in our lives. Being a student who just came from high school, the
writing concept is different from college. In the start of the term, there were
a number of misconceptions on how students write an essay. In my personal
experience, the misapprehensions on how I write an essay is whether to use
first, second or third person perspective. The professor clearly explained to
the students that the third person perspective is always the best one to use in
writing essays that are required for school. Another problem in writing an
essay is how to cite a source properly. The professor clearly explained to the
students how to use the APA style in citing. She even showed the students a
link on the Internet on how to cite sources when there is more than one author
or no author at all. The last misunderstanding is how to make a strong and bold
thesis statement that can attract the attention of the audience to read our
essay. To be honest, I never really knew how to make a thesis statement until
the professor taught us. During our extended definition essay, she stated that
it is better to have two sentences for the thesis statement rather than one. The
first sentence containing what I understand about the word and the second
sentence containing what the three main points are about the word. To sum it
all up, all the other misconceptions in class were all clarified by the
professor.
From June to December 2012, we wrote two essays in class:
extended definition and argumentative essay. Both essays were very challenging
to me in a way that it had so much drafting before I finally reached my final
paper. I had to go back to the professor and ask her five times just to get my
thesis statement approved. The agony did not stop there, I had to be patient in
dealing with getting the right words that could attract the audience for my
introduction. I had to get the right attention getter that would make them read
my whole essay and would not get bored. After the introduction, we had to pass
our first draft to the professor and the grade I got was low that I had to stay
up late the next night just to get the right words that could get me a high
grade. Even though I had all these challenges, I managed to stay patient with
myself and with the paper itself.
I remember the first day of school where the professor
immediately asked us to write an essay about a certain issue in the country. I decided
to write about Over Population. After writing the extended definition and argumentative
essay, we then had to write this so called “exit essay” which was also about
Over Population. After three months of writing essays over and over again,
going through revisions and going through all my mistakes, comparing my entry
and exit essay, I can say that I have improved in writing not only in the
format but also grammatically. I knew when to use the third person perspective,
I knew what the right transitional devices and reporting verbs to use.
We all have our
goals and objectives before we start on a certain project. My objective in this
class was to get the chance to actually finish a paper with a good grade and
teach myself a lesson to be patient with certain things. I can say that I have
actually achieved my goal. I taught myself a lesson that I should not
procrastinate, should not get frustrated with myself and the professor because
these could bring me to my downfall. Though I did not get the grade for my
final paper, I think I did my best and hope that all the sweat and tears paid
off.
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