On a hot and humid June day towards the end of my senior year at Norwood High School and everyone just had enough with school and couldn’t wait for the summer vacation to start. Later that afternoon, I walked into my English class on the third floor and everyone was anxious to find out what the final was going to about because our teacher was known to be one of the hardest graders and I didn’t feel as if I fully understood how to write at the time. Then, after everyone arrived our teacher announced that we were going to have to write a five paragraph essay on all the books that we read throughout the year (In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, 1984 by George Orwell, and Hamlet by William Shakespeare) and how they all relate to aspects of real life; she told us that we had about a week to finish it.
So, despite all of the other work I was buried in for my other classes I decided that I should definitely start my essay before worrying about anything else since I figured it would take the longest to do and it did. First, I started brainstorming ideas while scanning through the books and previous notes to find strong quotes to support the main idea of the essay. Eventually, I found perfect quotes to support the main idea after looking through everything for what felt like forever. Finally, I constructed a well thought through rough draft with strong key points, quotes, and explanations which served as a great help to eventually come up with to what would be my final draft.
Then, I have to admit I still somehow managed to procrastinate on writing the final draft of the essay even though I had everything I needed to start the final draft ready by the third day after the teacher assigned the essay. I didn’t start working on the final draft until the day right before it was due and I was up working on it most of that night as I fought myself to stay awake and finish writing. Finally, I finished writing the essay and it felt great to not have to worry about it anymore but I still took some time out to proofread and it seemed to be perfect and fell asleep faster than ever after a long night of working.
The next morning, I drove to school and it was a typical hot summer day. Later that day, the time came to go to English class and after everyone walked in the teacher went around her dark, cold classroom to collect the essays and I handed mine to her confidently. She then frustradily lectured us about how important the final was because some students didn’t even do the essay. A couple days after, the teacher passed the essays back corrected and many of my friends were complaining about their grades which made me worried . When I looked at my grade I was kind of surprised considering most students got bad grades on the assignment and i felt proud of my work. Overall, after writing the final in my senior year English class and being one of the only ones to get a good grade I felt less intimidated of writing and understood it a lot better than before.
Writing Rhetorically Blog 