Mason Vodry

8/27/14
Draft 1

My first paper in Public School

I was Home Schooled most of my childhood until Sophomore year when I decided to go
into public school. I enjoyed staying at home because I could spend more time with my family.
While I was Home Schooled i didnt do much writing I was always racing motocross and doing
activities outside. I wasnt very good at putting my thoughts onto a piece of paper. I was much

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begging of your paragraphs to the end of your
paragraphs.
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better at doing on hands projects. I would write sometimes but I wasnt very good at it. I

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wouldnt be able to get my point across through writing. I also had bad handwriting so I didnt

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get my point across.

enjoy writing because it was hard for me to have good penmanship. I also was bad at spelling so

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also"

I was always trying to get better at spelling and not worrying about being good at writing.
When I went into High School I didnt know what to expect so I went into all academic
classes. I had the most problems with my English class. My English teacher was really nice and I

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thought she did a good job but I just wasnt used to writing that much and I didnt have very
well punctuation or grammar. I started off doing well on the reading and vocabulary quizzes. All

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that stuff had to do with memorization and I could handle that. I did however struggle on the

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memorization."

writing. All of our writing assignments were done in class and i didnt like that. I think I could of

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done better if I was able to go home and write my papers there.

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better if I was able to go home and write my papers."

Our first serious paper came along in class. we were given the prompt that day and we
had the rest of the class period to finish it. It was hard for me because I got really stressed when I
got the prompt i didnt know how to respond to the statement and I just couldnt think of
anything to say about it. So I was rushed because I was trying to write the most that I could.
Because of this I made a lot of grammatical mistakes which I knew would bring my grade down.

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beginning of class and had until the end of class to
complete it."
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Mason Vodry
8/27/14
Draft 1

When we got our papers back I saw that I got a 65. I saw that I made a lot of spelling and

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grammatical mistakes. I made other mistakes that I didnt realize I made. Even though I didnt

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get a good grade I feel like it was good for me to have that feedback. I now had a good

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understanding at what I needed to improve on I had hope that I would be able to do better next

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time with having my feedback. I took the criticism as a way to help me to improve. I wasnt mad

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me hope..."

at the teacher because i knew my paper wasnt the best. Our teacher told us that people that got

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under a certain grade would have a chance to go to a writing tutor and would be able to rewrite

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their paper. I was excited to hear this because I had a chance to better my grade. I went to the
tutoring and got some good advice from the people. I realized that a lot of my mistakes were

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that a lot of my mistakes were easy fixes."

easily fixed. The tutors showed me that I could improve my sentence structure to make my
papers flow better. I also had many repeating sentences and misspelled words. After I went to the
tutoring and I began to rewrite my paper I took a lot more time writing it. I thought about what
the tutors said and I would correct my self while I was writing it.
I finished writing it and turned it in. This time I felt much better about the paper I had

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"corrected"
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written.
had more time to write and I was very confident that my grade would improve. When I got my

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second grade it was a 85. Was very proud of myself for improving that much. This increased my

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interest in my English classes from then on. I felt like Icould become I decent writer in the long
run. I improved a lot throughout that class and ended up eventually taking English Honors my
Senior year.

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