1.

Spend ten minutes writing about a time when you wrote something and it didn’t work at all--

people didn’t understand it, thought you had made terrible mistakes, ignored it, etc. Describe the

experience and your feelings about it.

The last summer before my high senior year consisted of me writing and planning for my

college essays. It started out as jumbled ideas in my brain to a two paged essay. It was a chance

to show colleges who I am and what I wanted to do in the future. My essay became a

summarized autobiography of my life. After typing the last letter of my essay, it gave me a sense

of relief. I felt a sense of accomplishment and was ready to take on the world. I poured my

passions, hardships, and personal experiences into my essay and yet I felt like many colleges just

overlooked it. It made me feel angry at first. Did I not get my point across? Was it a bad essay?

Instead of dwelling on my denials, I remembered what the essay had taught me. The essay I

wrote told me to just keep going and not pay attention to what others think. It was a very

personal essay and at first I doubted myself. Telling myself “ Maybe I am not good enough for

this school,” or “ I guess I should have tried harder.” Those thoughts fluttered my mind and my

confidence dropped. My essay was a way for me to “communicate, to share ideas, to get things

done” (Warner and Down 4). This essay was different from others because I felt engaged

through the whole process. I answered in depth questions like “what is your purpose in life?” and

“what do you want to contribute to this world?” This experience has helped me work on my

weakness of self-doubt. I started to believe in myself and brush off the little things.
2. Try to remember a time when a rule or rules you were taught about writing by one authority

(teacher, parent, boss) were changed or contradicted by another authority. What was the rule?

Did you understand the reason for the change or contradiction at the time? Were you bothered by

it? How well was the difference (and the reason for it) explained to you?

The first time I started writing essays in elementary school, I learned the concept of

starting your essay with an intro paragraph, body paragraphs, and followed by a conclusion. That

became my foundation for writing. Writing became one of my weaknesses because I felt as

teachers would “read it and ignore your ideas and facts” but rather focus more on “ correctness

and organization” (Wardle and Down 2). For example, teachers would do one on one essay

reviews, but at the end, my paper would be marked up with grammar corrections rather than

helpful input. I was so used to formulaic writing until one day my whole perception of writing

essays changed my junior year of high school. My teacher told the class to write but if we wrote

in the formulaic way, it would not be graded. There was no format to follow and my classmates

became clueless. We’ve always written essays only one way since elementary school. It seemed

impossible at the moment but once we started to practice, it became interesting. I was never into

writing before because I felt like when I was writing, teachers were more focused on my

mistakes than actually reading my essays. It was instilled into me that I was not a good writer but

I learned that was just my conception. “If you think you are a bad writer because you struggled…

you might not be willing to try other kinds of writing” (Wardle and Down 5).It was then that my

conception about writing changed. I always dreaded writing before but once I learned to write

freely it sparked a sense of creativity in myself. I found myself more engaged and to the point

where my pen kept going even after the time ran out. I was able to look at writing as a “whole
process of creating that text text”(Wardle and Down 4). I have always dreaded teachers that

follow a specific format to grade students. There were times where my teachers would add

instructions that say this essay should be at least five paragraphs. Yet I have learned quality

writing is better than quantity.