Slow and Steady Progession by Kassidi

Slow and Steady Progession by Kassidi - August 2014 Scholarship Essay

My Junior year of High School I was so ready for school to start. I love to learn and my Sophomore year was in all honesty, a breeze. The reason I was able to do this was because I was fortunate enough to have a teacher who was very interested to know what his students learning style was. He had us all take a test and explained to us if we knew what our learning style was, we could use it to our advantage. I realized from my results that I had two learning styles; I am a Kinesthetic and Visual learner. I would always try to sit in the front middle of my classes and I would take good and long notes. I hardly ever had to study yet I could ace my tests. I thought that I was set for the rest of my life to ace every single test from then on. But then I decided to take a more challenging class my junior year. I chose to take English 11 Honors. Somewhere inside of me I had the feeling to not take the class because I am great at math but English is my personal Kryptonite.

The eleventh grade honors English teacher loved to have us write essays, and he was very opinionated. The first essay I wrote I got a C. Yet the paper was longer than the minimum length he requested, I had stated my claim and gave what I thought to be very good evidence, I gave an eloquent and long introduction, I used a variety of vocabulary; what more could he want? When I questioned him about why I received the grade that I did, he responded that the paper was sloppy. My first thought was, “Excuse me? I’m an A student, I don’t write sloppy!” I asked him to to elaborate further on the issue. He said that I was so focused on trying to gain the audience’s attention in the introduction that I didn’t lead well into the body of the paper. He said that my reasons and evidence were not well organized and that there was no flow; that I could think deeper for stronger evidence. That my conclusion was abrupt and that I needed a strong, supportive and persuasive conclusion that fit with the rest of the essay. He wouldn’t change my grade, he just stated to do better on the next paper. I was stumped and frustrated, I decided all that I could really do was try harder on the future essays.

The class for the rest of the year was honestly a struggle, it was not a ‘one time fix’ or a ‘cruise through the next two semesters’ type of situation. It was slow progressive growth and it helped me learn how to be a better writer. Throughout the year I learned how to organize my thoughts better, how to get the point, and to think deeper. It was tough, and I didn’t do very well the first few weeks. But in the end, I came out a better writer. I would not go back and change a single thing about my experience, I feel more prepared for college and life after taking that English 11 Honors class.