December 13, 2023

Dear Mrs. Williams,

The purpose of this letter is to explain the revisions I have made as part of my final exam in
English 111. I have decided to revise my formal assignment on/education narrative. I picked this
assignment to revise because I feel like it really shows what I am like as a writer and there were
a few things that I needed to revise.

Before taking English 111 my writing was not very good. In my past English classes we focused
more on reading comprehension and would only write one or two papers all year. My writing has
matured so much. Before this class I was still using simple transition words such as firstly or
secondly now I can not imagine putting that in a college paper. I believe that a paragraph could
be as long as I wanted it to be, and I thought that you should not create a new paragraph until
you were done sharing a certain point.

My writing changed significantly while taking this course and in such a positive way. I do not use
simple elementary words anymore. I now use more complex words through my assignments. I
also have gotten much better about sharing opinions because of the discussion boards which I
have grown to love. I now know that a paragraph should not be longer than five sentences and
that it is okay if multiple paragraphs are talking about the same thing which I had never done
before but now I can see why.

My revision of my narrative essay demonstrates these changes in my writing throat the entire
essay. The original copy of my essay consisted of five paragraphs with one of my paragraphs
taking up the entire page. Now with the revised copy it is thirteen paragraphs that are five
sentences long. Through my paper I used more college language as opposed to something I
would have done last year.

I choose this essay because I believe that this essay represents some of my best work that I
have done in this class because it gave me more creative freedom, allowing me to truly show
my talents. This piece allowed me to talk about myself which can sometimes be hard especially
when I talk about things that I struggle with but I really opened up when writing this essay. I also
believe it shows my best work because it was not all based on research compared to the
annotated bibliography assignments which displayed your ability to research and summaries,
while the narrative essay allowed me to not have to worry about research and just write what I
know.

When I wrote my very first draft for this essay I had to plan out everything that I was going to
write about in my essay. I created a separate google document where I put all of the topics I
wanted to talk about in my essay and I included a brief summary about each point. Then I
organized my essay based on the point that I had come up with in the other document. If I had
not created that separate document with the points I wanted to mention I would have had no
idea where to start.

I found that peer reviewing helped me to largely improve my paper, especially the rough draft.
My rough draft had plenty of mistakes that my peer review had caught for me even though I had
read through my paper multiple times. Peer reviewing is such a crucial step in any type of formal
assignment because sometimes something makes sense to you but in reality does not make
sense which is why peer reviewing is so important. For my reviewed essay I had two of my
fellow classmates review my new revised copy of my narrative essay.
I believe that the most significant change that I made while creating the revised essay is
breaking up my paragraphs. I originally had five paragraphs and in my revised essay I now have
thirteen. Reading through the essay with the paragraphs broken up is so much easier and
makes me want to read my essay. This was also the only comment that you made on my essay
the first time I submitted it. I totally agree with you that the essay looks so much better now that
the paragraphs are all spaced out.

The pre-writing allowed for me to write down all of my thoughts before writing the essay. That
way I knew what points I was going to say. This also allowed me to organize everything in the
way that I wanted to format it so that it made sense to me and others. I was able to plan out
what I wanted to talk about such as me being a slow learner and slow test taker, and then talk
about my struggles with staying focused and then I was able to close of my statements by
talking about my crazy biology class and how Mrs. Dunn helped me to do excellent on the
Biology final despite my crazy year.

After completing my revised essay I feel that the strongest part of my essay writing is my
organization. I tend to be an extremely organized person especially when it comes to anything
school related. I believe that organization is t one of my greatest strengths because I tend to be
a perfectionist and that means that my papers have to be organized in my mind and for other
people.

I feel pretty excellent about my paper. I worked extremely hard on it and had two separate
people peer review my revised essay. I have looked at the rubric and understand what needs to
go into the paper and I feel that I have followed these expectations. The only thing that I feel
could make my paper better would be if there were more instructions for what to put in the
paper.

I feel that this class helped to improve my writing significantly. I learned so much about writing
and the different writing styles which I didn't even know existed before taking this course. I really
struggled with writing about my own opinions before taking this class now it is one of my favorite
things to do in all of my classes. I feel like I would enjoy writing more opinion based stuff
because I really enjoyed doing these types of discussion boards, and I feel they helped my
writing a lot.

Overall I believe that this class has been extremely beneficial to the improvement of my writing
skills. This course made me step outside of my comfort zone and because of that I have
discovered that I really enjoy writing opinion based assignments especially on the discussion
board. I really enjoyed doing discussion boards because I could share my opinion but also learn
from other classmates. I made a children's book which is something that I have never done in
my thirteen years of school. I really enjoyed making the book because I love kids and hope to
go into a field that involves me being around kids, and childrens books bring joy to the kids. I
really enjoyed this course because all of our formal assignments we did something different for
each of them. I am really glad that I took this course and can not wait to take English 112 and
learn more about writing about research.

Sincerely,
Carly Yates
cjyates@mymail.gaston.edu
Revised Essay:

Carly Jane Yates

ENG-111

Professor Williams

07 October 22023

My Educational Difficulties and Blessings

Throughout my life school has never been a place that I have liked but there are some

things that have made school better and some things that have made it so much worse. I have

always been very slow, and have a hard time focusing, but there have been some teachers that

make me enjoy school.

Ever since I started school I have done fine, I always got A’s but I was never the

smartest, just average. I always take my time with everything I do whether it be school related or

cleaning my room. I am somewhat of a perfectionist but most of the time I just can not think as

fast as everyone. I look at a problem and can get it done but if it takes someone one minute it will

take me five. Whenever I take a test I am always one of the last to finish.

I first noticed it in third grade when we first started having state testing in third grade. It

took so long they took me to another room where it was me and one another person in the whole

school testing. I would later get a five which is the highest grade on the test that you can get on

the test. I am still very slow when it comes to school. I take longer than most people to do

assignments, study and am almost always the last one to finish a quiz or test.

One of the reasons I think it might take me so long to do things is that I zone out all of the

time. I space out during any class in school, watching television, even in the middle of a

conversation. I am not sure if there is a reason behind it because I have never been tested for a

learning disability, but when I was young some of my teachers told me that I might have one. I
start to fall behind when I zone out during the lesson. In math oftentimes things are based on

other things so when I zone out for twenty minutes for one day I am lost for a week or until I go

talk to the teacher and have them explain it to me.

In the past we have read our books out loud or done an audio book so when I would zone

out I would miss everything from a chapter and it would be like I was not even in class that day.

During testing I zone out but I am also easily distracted. Any time someone gets up or drops

something or makes any kind of noise I lose focus completely. I have tried testing in a separate

room to see if that helps but when I tried it somehow made me space out even more. I think that

while the noise distracts me from the test they also help me get back to reality when I am zoned

out.

I have tried a few different methods to focus and stop spacing out. One technique that

did not really work for me was counting backwards by seven. I found that taking deep breaths

helps the most. I try to take three big deep breaths before I start a test or assignment. When I find

myself drifting I take one big breath and that usually helps me get forced.

Something that was really hard for me last year was that we had three different biology

teachers in one year. I have an interest in the medical field so when I got to take biology and

learn more about the body I was excited. The teacher at the beginning of the year was really nice

and was actually my bus driver so I had already formed a connection with him. I had heard that

his quizzes were difficult. I looked forward to the challenge because I knew that once I

understand something I can remember the information.

I believe it was about two weeks into school when he told us that he was moving and by

the end of the month he would no longer be our teacher. I was disappointed that I was not going

to have him as a teacher but I was really most worried about not having a replacement teacher for
him. After a month went by we still did not have a teacher. That class just became a free period

because there were also no assignments. At the start of the second quarter we got a teacher.

Dr. Landrum was a professor at Gaston College. She would come into class and teach us

on Monday, Wednesday, and some Fridays. While she was not there the whole time I was very

thankful that we had someone come in and teach us. She was actually a very good teacher, she

would talk and give us examples of real world things to make it easier to remember vocabulary.

She would come in and give lectures and then give us assignments for the days she was not

there.

This situation was not ideal but I was doing fine in the class but I was not truly

understanding what we were learning. I knew that they were getting ready to hire someone and I

was thrilled to hear that we would get a full time teacher starting after winter break. The new

teacher was Mrs. Dunn and she was my seventh grade science teachers so I knew her and had a

connection with her. Once she came and started teaching everything made more sense. She

explained everything from earlier that year and taught us everything in our curriculum and I

understand everything.

One day she gave us assigned seats because someone in the class had a problem with

someone else and they could not be close to each other. Mrs. Dunn was so nice so she tried to put

people with their friends or at least some you did not dislike. She made one mistake by all of the

loudest people at one table. I ended up at this table. Mrs. Dunn started to get so frustrated with

my table because some people would talk while was teaching and she gave us all zeros. I went

and talked to her about how I was doing my work and she understood and took the zeros out.

I moved seats to the front at a quieter table and I was able to focus more in class. As the

end of the year approached so did the end of course test this added to my anxiety. Mrs. Dunn had
study times when I would go in and study and she would go over things that we might see on the

exam. The day of the test came and I was so anxious. Mrs. Dunn helped me calm my nerves and

told me I was going to do great and hearing that from her instantly calmed me down. I took the

test and knew the answer to almost every question and when I got my results I found out I had

gotten one of the best grades in my whole school!

School has never been something I have looked forward to, there are some things that

make school more tolerable. I still struggle with anything that is timed because the only way I

can do something is if I take my time. I continue to try my best to focus and am still learning new

ways to help improve my focus. I am so grateful for Mrs. Dunn and so many other teachers who

have helped me enjoy school.