The Dreadful Debatable Research Paper by Raleigh

The Dreadful Debatable Research Paper by Raleigh - June 2016 Scholarship Essay

I always enjoyed school. I liked seeing my friends just like any other teenager but I also really loved learning. I loved math and art classes. I truly thrived in those subjects. I did not thrive so much in classes that included essay writing. I enjoyed creative writing because you can just use your imagination but with research papers, it is very important to pay attention to detail so you are being correct and using the facts. I moved before my freshman year of high school and the states taught how to write essays at different times, I ended up missing it completely. I was never taught properly how to write a solid research paper. I really hated that I did not how to write a paper, it was a little embarrassing and I felt dumb because of it. I always hoped that I would easily pass ever having to write an actual research essay. That did not happen.

My sophomore year of high school in Honors English I, our student teacher gave us a research paper to write. The catch was that the subject had to be debatable. I was already freaking out that I had to write a research paper but the fact that it had to be debatable threw me way off. I had no idea what that meant or how to do that. I knew I was in huge trouble, plus I am a huge procrastinator, so you can probably see how this was going to turn out.

We did not have much time for this assignment and the student teacher gave us a few days in class to work on it. At home I was not doing too much work on the paper, in class though I tried asking for help on how to pick a topic and how to even write the paper. I do not think the student teacher understood the fact I really did not know how to write a research paper. So she was not much help, at all.

Finally the due date came and I had no paper, just a pile of research on my topic that I had no idea how to shape into a simple debatable research paper. I explained to me teacher that I had nothing to turn in and I tried to explain why without it sounding like I was trying to give excuses. I told her I asked multiple times for help but I was not given anything useful, just worthless encouragements. So she helped me figure it out and how I should go about writing it and she gave me some more time to finish it, with some deduction for being late. I took it though. That night I stayed up until two a.m. finishing my essay. It was still very stressful and I really still did not understand how to write it, but I told myself to stop overthinking and just write the paper and be done with it. The next day I turned in my debatable research paper, relieved to be over with it.

I learned a lot from this paper. I learned that I obviously cannot be a procrastinator because that it will never ever help with an assignment. Then secondly that I cannot just wait on a teacher to help me complete my assignment, I can ask for help but not rely on them. I have always done well in school but I also learned that I sometimes it takes me longer than others to understand something, like how to write an essay, but that does not mean that I am unintelligent. I need to be confident of my abilities and not give up easily and not to doubt my intelligence because sometimes I can be slower than others at learning. Everyone learns differently.