Arias 1

Alondra Arias

Professor Brian Graves

LANG 120

2 February 2017

The Ultimate Mentor

After a nap, dinner, and enough YouTube videos to take me to the sketchy side of

YouTube, I decided it was about time to open up my laptop and face what I had been avoiding

all day: reading the comments Professor Hanson left on my most recent paper. As I stared at the

black and white, seven page document, I noticed a couple red comments jutting out to the

margins. One read, I really like this title! The next, Work on sentence structure. And finally,

Clarify. I scrolled looking for more, expecting more but this was really all there was to find on

a paper that only earned me a C? I wanted to know why I was making such a mediocre grade so

that I could fix the problem, but how could I with a few comments telling me only what was

wrong. But hey, at least my title was good, right?

This event occurred during my junior year when I decided to take a college writing

course my high school offered in union with my local community college. It was an online

course with students of all ages all with different levels of writing experiences. I felt

overwhelmed because most of the students were a lot older than me. At most, only one other

student from my high school took the class. Over the course of the semester, we were assigned

four different papers to write. The first a personal narrative, second an ethnography, third a

research paper, and fourth a reflection essay. Of these four genres, I only had experience writing
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two. That aspect made for a difficult time during the writing process of the two I wasnt as

familiar with.

Now, let me start off by saying that semester was rough. As Ive heard many other

graduates mention, junior year is one of the most time consuming and stressful times in all of

high school. Trying to figure out the whole driving thing, maintaining personal relationships,

looking into universities and colleges, along with trying to finish up all the classes youre

required to take is a lot to figure out for someone who has never really had to put much effort

into any one task. We answered the same questions each year never having to refine our skills

because of familiarity. We already knew how to approach many high school assignments. But

this was different. Not only was this a college level course, but also online. Even now I dont

really know if the decision to take it online was a beneficial one or not. I do have to admit the

first few months hurt my ego a bit. Although I didnt really think of myself as a good writer, I

knew I wasnt necessarily a bad one. It didnt hurt that the course was online so when the person

who decided they were going to be the overachiever of the class posted a response, it was

available to everyone else in the class to scrutinize. I surveyed everyone elses writing and based

off of what I read, I felt comfortable with my skill level compared to everyone elses. I figured I

would get along just fine.

Okay, Im sure at some point in everyones life theres a certain project at work, school,

or home that youve put all your time and effort into. It resides in the depths of your mind where

you drag it out every day and make improvements to it. Its like a child you raise before it

matures and faces the harsh, cruel world it has been destined for since the womb. Well, my
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babies were the narrative and mini-ethnography. And that harsh cruel world was Professor

Hanson.

Professor Hanson somehow managed to exude intimidation through your computer

screen. Everything she wrote or requested was enforced by some imaginary authoritative figure

that stared at you until you submitted an assignment. You felt a sense of urgency to appease her.

I needed to show her that I wasnt just some high school student trying to take on more than I

could handle. I knew that I would probably never see this woman in real life and that I was more

than likely just a small afterthought in her daily routine. I was okay with that until I realized that

if all I ever amounted to was an afterthought, then I wasnt growing as a writer.

I think Ill always hold the narrative and ethnography close to my heart because I feel like

they were writing prompts that were a little more serious than the essays I had to write in high

school. I remember pouring so much time into writing and revising in order to make things

sound collegiate that most of the time I forgot what I was trying to argue or support. I was trying

to reach the page count by inserting any fluff I could think of. After reading Nancy Sommers

article in class, I realized my experience was much like many of the student writers. Not only

was my revising surface level rewording, I was still being taught the linear model. I had to figure

out everything I wanted to say within the first paragraph, shape my entire paper based on that,

submit it for peer review sometime during the week (in which it was evident that my peers had

also been taught in a linear fashion), revise some things, and submit on time. How disheartening

it is when you do everything youve been taught for twelve years just to get to a certain level,

unable to grow anymore. The worst part is actually having the motivation and passion to

strengthen your writing but not knowing how. You turn to your professor for help and all you get
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from them is a few comments on sentences or words you should change but no actual

information on how to change. That just encourages a cycle of guess-and-check that avoids

solving the problem.

Now, what actually was my problem? The personal narrative and the ethnography had

something in common that I didnt want to accept. They were works that required you to know

what you wanted to write and how you were going to write it. I had no idea what exactly to write

or how I was going to go about it because up to this point in my writing career, I didnt have any

experience handling these genres. Going from writing short answer essays in high school to

seven page papers in APA format in college was a difficult thing to adjust to. I had nothing to go

off of other than the examples she posted for the two assignments. I did my best to try and mimic

the styles I saw but still without the full understanding of what an ethnography or narrative was.

To this day I believe thats true for most first-year writing students. We look for examples

hoping that we can perform similar to the As and Bs shown, but without understanding the key

concepts behind the assignments. We dont even fathom that maybe, just maybe, theres a

problem which can only be solved through writing more papers.

In a world of netflix and social media, thinking about writing is literally the last thing I

want to do let alone admit to myself that I might actually have to set aside time to do

something thats not required. After receiving below average grades and relatively little feedback

on the first two assignments, I was feeling very discouraged going into the final research and

reflective papers. How much worse can it get? Well, turns out it actually got better. I didnt even

really understand why. I figured that maybe Professor Hanson cut us some slack toward the end

of the semester even though that seemed very unlike her. What I failed to realize at that moment
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was that there were different levels of experience that I had with each assignment. I had done

plenty of research and reflection style papers in high school but when was the last time youve

heard of a teacher assigning an ethnography to a bunch of clueless underclassmen? I simply had

more experience with some types of writing than with others.

Who actually begins an unfamiliar task knowing how to do it flawlessly? Its natural to

not know and Im tired of being shamed for it. Not knowing is the first step to learning how to do

something in which you could go on to be an expert in. I was lying to myself when I thought that

I knew how to write these specific genres. I didnt want to admit that I might not know how to do

something. After all, everything in life teaches us we cant fail.

So, Im not going to lie to you. Every new assignment I have to write I give a little groan,

roll my eyes, and tell myself it will make me a better writer. Having to accept the fact that

writing more will help me write less in the future gets me through assignments in college. Im

glad that Ive had those opportunities to strengthen my writing because that exposure was key in

me succeeding and in any success I have in the future. Not everyone can be a writer but I do

believe experience can be the best advisor.