Ms. Zen, When I arrived back to Charlotte Country Day School in October, I knew little about anything, much less passive voice and 9th grade English rules. My very first piece, “If You Give a Suitor a Cookie”, was an analytical 8-point paper about The Odyssey, and it was quite literally the worst paper I have ever written. It was so terrible, that I couldn’t even make it through the first paragraph, when I attempted to re-read it. I remembered my writing not being horrible, because, otherwise, I wouldn’t have turned it in. As I recall, it was so bad, that you didn’t even grade it, because I would’ve gotten an F (thank you about that, by the way). This paper exemplifies the very beginning of my career as a high school writer, and through re-reading …show more content…
I knew that I earned a sub-par grade on this assignment, and I wanted the chance to prove myself. Quite frankly, when I re-read it, the grade that I earned had shocked me. Based on what I read, I thought it was like a C/C- paper at best, but somehow, I ended up with a B+ on it. My original paper had spelling issues, passive voice, and a heck of a lot of repetition. For example: “are focused”, “is caused”, “is represented”, etc. (30, 32-33, 40). I just kept making silly errors, including: spelling the word “existence” wrong, using the wrong form of “show”, using passive voice 7+ times, using the word “more” no less than 8 times, spelling the name of the poet wrong (twice), and using verbs ending in -ing 22 times (not including quotes). When I re-wrote this paper, I made sure that I a) got rid of my passive voice, b) corrected by spelling errors, and c) made my writing less terrible. I deleted phrases that I believed were opinionated (which was the majority of my paper), and I replaced them with phrases supported by the text. I wanted to make sure that the √- I got on content turned into a √+. Every change I made was to better fit the text/paper I was writing to the poem. I changed my thesis from: “In Edwin Muir’s “The Return of Odysseus”, Muir emphasized the chaos and hopelessness of Penelope in order to elude to the fact that it is humanity’s desire to have something more in life, whether in life, …show more content…
I start by reading the prompts and brainstorming ideas that would potentially work. Then, I settle on a handful, and I think of evidence I could use to support my claim, and whichever has the most support, I pick as my topic. Then I start with my thesis, and continue with my body paragraphs, and finish with the remainder of my introduction and my conclusion. Finally, I re-read my paper at least twice, and I judge it and make the necessary changes. Personally, I believe this method suits me well and has helped me get started on even the most monstrous of papers. While, there has been some embezzlement to my method, such as new revision techniques (i.e. reading it out loud), it has remained, for the most part, consistent. However, there is one large thing I added to my method this year: not starting my paper the night before it’s due. This addition has improved my writing grades tenfold, and it is helping me rid myself of procrastination. The amount of work that we have in other classes has really pushed me to develop this