English Exit Exam Essay

My writing journey this semester has been a roller coaster. Since the beginning of this course I have improved in so many different areas. When I first began in this class, I didn’t have a clue how to start my essays. I wasn’t very good with being descriptive either. On top of that, revising was something I hated to do. My writing process was very messy and organization was never something I considered when writing a paper. Since taking this class my skills in organization, revision, and description have improved tremendously. I wasn’t a big fan of drafting before I started this class. My writing process has always been all over the place. I could be writing paragraph one and then skip to paragraph four for no apparent reason. Sometimes I would just write different paragraphs on different pieces of papers and then put them all together afterwards. In this class I was taught why drafting is so important to my writing process. It helped me be more organized and less stressed. My mind was in one place and on track, rather than all over the place. If drafting and organizational skills weren’t already big enough issues to deal with, then revision definitely was. In the past, I hated having to read over my paper repeatedly until it was near perfect. On top of that, event though my personality is big, it doesn’t mean I’m big on sharing my work. I was scared that if I made a simple mistake the person revising my paper would think I was stupid. After reading over some of my classmates’ papers I learned they made some of the same mistakes as me. Then I came to realize I’m only human and I’m going to make mistakes. It was something I had to get use to and I’m glad I fixed that problem in my life. Even though I did a lot of writing in my English class, there were other things we had to do also. Almost every night we had to read in our textbook. The textbook taught me a lot about the right and wrong things to do while writing. It also explained to me the different styles of writing and gave plenty of examples. Not only did I read the book, but I finished an online writing class. This Writing Class was mainly about grammar and how to correct grammar errors. Before writing class, I really didn’t know how to use commas. I would guess most of the time and hope I was right. I should have known one day it was going to catch up with me and it did. Luckily for me, I had a wonderful professor to teach me and help me with my problem. After studying my professor’s lecture and doing the online activities, I was ready to take the online quiz. When I took it, I passed it with flying colors. I really worked hard in all the subjects in Writing Class and I ended up passing all of the quizzes, even the post test. I was recently instructed to revise two of my previous essays I’ve written in class for my portfolio. I automatically knew which ones I wanted to revise. My first one was about my writing journey throughout life. I needed to be more descriptive and also had some grammatical errors to fix. The essay was based upon how I used to read to my peers in Pre-K, which led to me making my own short stories. It also tells about the time I had my poem published in high school by my teacher. Not being descriptive was the main problem I had with this essay. When I wrote my draft I didn’t paint a picture for my audience to see where I was coming from. Instead of saying â€Å"The big red chair†, I would just write, â€Å"the chair† and the difference in these two quotes are obvious and can automatically tell which one is more descriptive. With many changes made to this essay I would say I worked really hard on this one. Especially since it was a more personal subject, I put a lot of work into it. My second essay assignment was to write about a club or organization on campus. The purpose of the essay was to get new college students to join the club of my choice. I chose ROTC because I was a part of it in high school. I love the feeling I got from my lieutenant and cadets. We were all like a big family and kept up with each other a lot. From speaking to a former cadet that attends GGC, I have confirmed that ROTC is the same at this school in many aspects. When writing my draft, again, I didn’t explain things thoroughly. I needed more evidence to support my claims. In many sentences I didn’t use the right word either. Misspelled words and comma splices were all through my paper. When I took the time to revise it, I was able to fix these problems. Instead of letting Microsoft Word find my mistakes, I carefully read through it and did it myself. I reviewed the comma splice lesson and was able to find where those were in my paper. When I did more research on the club, I was able to add more details to my paper. In no time my final copy looked completely from where I started. As a child I was told hard work will definitely pay off. With all my hard work in the class I am hoping that it will surely pay off in me exiting this class early. I have learned to revise my papers, be more descriptive, correct grammatical errors, and last but not least have an organized writing process. With the skills I’ve learned in this class I will be able to succeed in my other classes. Every class in college has some form of writing so I will never get away from it. In order to succeed in my major, I will need to take my writing seriously. It is amazing how I was able to learn so much in so little time. I am glad I was able to fix my faults and write a great paper. I think you will enjoy my portfolio and be more than happy to pass me.