The Write Fight by Marcos

The Write Fight by Marcos - August 2014 Scholarship Essay

The middle of the year is when students across campus pick the classes they intend on taking. My English options ranged between 3 levels of difficulty: Regular English, Honors English, and Advanced Placement Composition (AP Comp). When it comes to future-looking decisions, I tend enjoy challenge. My English teacher at the time encouraged me to take regular or honors English despite my curiosity on taking AP Comp. She felt that the class was “perhaps too difficult for my level”. On some level, I wrote down AP Comp on the form in spite of her doubt, but I also wanted to focus on writing and this class advocated just that.

AP Comp. does not compare to any English class I have ever taken. The curriculum is geared towards writing: the style, grammar, tone, and voice of both my writing and remarkable writing. This emphasis on writing became very clear as the class went forward. Unlike the English classes I had taken before, there were no reading tests or reading comprehension homework. There were simply essays.

I distinctly remember the completion of my rough draft of the first paper. The class was required to find partners to peer edit with. I did not know most of the students, but fortunately I found an acquaintance and he read my paper to himself while I graded his. After a minute he explained to me how bad he thought it was and laughed while I justified that I had written it very late and had been tired, though I hadn’t. Using his red pen he corrected and destroyed my paper like a trained swordsman. I quickly became embarrassed of both that paper and my writing ability. This failure became a landmark for me. I was not going to allow my first attempt at this level of writing to stop me from doing well in this class.

That year we wrote roughly 12 essays. I spent more time on those essays than I did on any other class and I would revise them constantly and I would have others revise them. I would print the paper, have my father edit it, then my mother, my close friend, and then edit it myself. Each paper was the best paper I had literally ever written. The teacher was pushing for his students to grasp far more advanced ideas and concepts than I was ready for, but I kept up with them. I took notes and fought for the right to sit next to best writers of the school.

Perseverance brought me to become a better writer. In retrospect, I am not proud of how great my writing was, but how much I fought to improve each and every day starting from that first essay. This characteristic has embodied my school efforts as a whole. I choose classes and schedules that are difficult because I enjoy this way of life - an amount of pressure that drives me. This has caused my report card to have some Bs, but has made me as a stronger individual. My writing, math, and Spanish skills have developed to become my fortes after taking AP classes. One of motto that represents my approach to my life and my high school education is taken from my band teacher: “Live life with no regrets”.