The Power of Accomplishment by Anne

The Power of Accomplishment by Anne - December 2016 Scholarship Essay

There is a wonderful feeling that results from a person knowing full well that they have just performed the best job they could have done: a satisfaction that is the cause of a wonderful sense of euphoria. This sense of accomplishment is heightened when such actions yield equally powerful rewards. I experienced this with an essay I wrote for English about a novel I had read.

I love English. I love writing and I love learning how to write properly and efficiently. I had spent years attending English classes where I was told time and time again to write based off a rubric. I was given a set number of paragraphs, a set writing style, and was encouraged to write for length. I had always argued that writing isn’t about such things as uniformity and length—writing is about content and originality. Finally, in high school, we were encouraged to write efficiently and concisely with more concrete information instead of flowery words that served no purpose other than to lengthen an essay. We were also released from the prison of the accursed “five-paragraph essay.” Instead of writing an introduction with the last sentence specifying in plain words what we intended to write, we were allowed the freedom of subtly incorporating our information and making our writing our own.

Shifting from the restrictive guidance given by my junior high English teachers to the emphasis on free, original writing given by high school teachers was not an easy process. I was surprised by how safe it felt to revert to the simple, mechanical template of my younger days, but I did, one day, discover that I had the ability to write an essay of the caliber I had much desired. I had just finished Persuasion, a novel by Jane Austin, and one of my new favorite books. I was assigned this book about which to write an analytical essay. While I wrote, I began to take some risks in my writing that I had not yet attempted in academic composition. I used punctuation I hadn’t been familiar with and began to develop my own style of academic writing. I really enjoyed writing it and, for the first time in a long time, felt like I was turning in something personal: something that really represented me as a writer.

I believed I had fully enjoyed the rewards of my work when I finished that essay. I felt great about my work and believed that was enough. When the results were returned, I had received full credit and my English teacher asked if she could obtain a digital copy to use as an example for her future classes. This was quite a compliment and I felt newly inspired that I had the ability to write and express what I believe in the way that only I can.