Taking Responsibility by Megan

Taking Responsibility by Megan - August 2016 Scholarship Essay

While I have been lucky enough to have many challenging, interesting classes throughout my time in high school, I would say that I have learned the most in English class. The skills that I developed in English are applicable to nearly all other subjects, and are invaluable to life outside of school as well. I am not just referring to the obvious, like improvements in my writing or reading comprehension or grammar, but to time management and perseverance. English class has not only made me a more responsible student, but a more responsible person.
During my Junior year I took AP Literature, and I had heard horror stories about how difficult the class was- taking an essay test on the first day of school, writing multiple essays a month, and of course, preparing to write three essays in two hours for the AP test at the end of the year. Basically, it involved writing many, many essays, something that I did not like to do, nor was I good at. I think I got a C on my first essay in the class, and I thought I would have to drop. But I stuck with it, and I am a better student for it. Instead of getting angry whenever I did bad on an assignment, I learned to use negative feedback to improve my writing in the future. When I made a mistake, I was careful not to make it again. This has helped me outside of English as well- whenever I get a math problem wrong, I truly try to understand what I did wrong and how I can fix it.
Not only did I improve my writing skills by learning better paragraph organization and how to write better topic sentences, but I learned the importance of managing time. Forty minutes is not a lot of time to write an essay, much less a thoughtful and argumentative one. I could not just sit around and procrastinate anymore. I had to quickly organize my thoughts and answer the prompt. For longer essay assignments that we had to complete over several days or weeks, I learned how important it is to pace myself. Anyone can write an essay the night before it is due, but it will not be good. The key to succeeding on a larger project is to plan ahead, and stick to that plan. When I said, “I’ll have my introduction done by tomorrow and the next two paragraphs done by Wednesday,” I had to mean it, or else I would have to slap something together to get it in on time, and get a bad grade. Getting over procrastination is hard, but I became a greater student for it. This is something that I try to apply to all of my classes, and to tasks outside of school as well.
Whenever I hear a younger student talking about those same horror stories from Honors English classes, I don’t lie- I tell them that it will be hard, and at times they will wonder why they don’t just drop the class. But I also tell them that working hard in English will make them a better writer, reader, and student.