January 27, 2014
Dr. Jeanne Marie Rose
2080 Tulpehocken Road
Dear Dr. Jeanne Marie Rose and Class,
Writing has never been a strong subject of mine. Recalling back to my early high school years I always found it difficult to construct enjoyable and understandable essays. I spent hours to figure out what to do and how to approach the task but when finished I could never acquire the grade which I most desired. This did not discourage me though; I strived to become a better writer by asking for help from my peers and professors even when I believed that non-was needed. After countless papers, which were written by me, it started to become clear to myself what kind of writer I was.
In high school we were taught to write to five paragraph essays and not to use “I” in our essay which I found myself using in many writing situations. As a freshman in college I discovered the difference between high school writing and college writing. The rules which were put in place in high school such as not being to use “I” were removed. At first I thought these rules were a waste of time when writing essays but later on I discovered how writing five paragraph essay and not using “I” taught us to organize our thoughts in a structured and logical manner. These skills came in handy when we needed to research the topics we had no knowledge about. I remember my junior year when we were told to pick a famous person who impacted the world either in a negative or positive way. I chose Martin Luther King. We all know that he paved the way for equality for African American but one of the essay’s requirements was to find an interesting fact about the individual we picked and connect it to his achievements which was either positive or negative. Some may not know but Martin Luther King Jr is the youngest male to win a Nobel Peace Prize. He won it at an age of 35 in 1964. I connected this information by saying that without his dedication to better the lives of all African American he would not have been able to win the Noble Peace Prize. Being taught the five paragraph essay format and not to use “I” came in handy because the essay was not supposed to be opinion based and to have a structure to it. Knowing these skills will be beneficial because I have head from peers and professors that college writing asks for more researches because most of the topics, which will be assigned, will be topic, which we will have no knowledge on. One of the biggest essays, which I recall from my senior year of high school, was my college essay. The goal was to write an essay speaking about an individual who has had an impact in our lives either in a negative or positive way. This was a challenging essay because I chose my father as the individual that has had an impact in my life. Before starting the essay I cam to realize that I had mixed emotions abut whether my father had a positive impact in my life. To solve this problem I wrote categories down such as “Helping me in school, Being able to understand me, and providing for me”. Even though my father did not do every category that I had written down, he had done most of them which made me come to the conclusion that everything my father did for me was to better me as a man and an individual. Writing assignments like these I have come to enjoy because they make me think about the topics, which on my own I