Going into my Junior year of high school, I know the mindset I have of doing the best I can will dwindle down to procrastination and turning in “half-ass” work. The trigonometry I will study in precalculus will not benefit me in a future job. While the laws of physics can teach me why things in the world are the way they are, so can common sense. Learning about the days of the past is irrelevant to the days of tomorrow and unless I plan on moving to another country, which I am not, learning another language is just a waste of time. It seems that all of my classes are completely pointless and unnecessary for the rest of my life, except one: English.
Though I believe that English is my most important class, my favorite class is actually math. I imagine math as a fun puzzle solving game where finding the answer provides you with instant satisfaction. If you asked two years ago what my most important class was, I would say math. But after learning the fundamentals of mathematics, you dive into more complex topics that are less relatable to daily life. Math is black and white. Once you learn the rules of math, there is nowhere else to go. On the other hand, in English there is always room to improve and perfectness is impossible. It was upsetting to find out that the Sports and Literature course I had signed up for was canceled because the teacher who was supposed to teach had an unexpected leave of absence. I do not know the details. So sitting in a classroom were a bunch of sports crazed kids, like myself, in great disappointment of the sudden news. Something that I learned about my writing is that while I would love to write a descriptive essay about sports, writing a book analysis on Elie Wiesel’s Night is pure hell. Both assignments are writing, but it seems like two completely different subjects. I can go on and on talking about the electric atmosphere inside Mercedes-Benz Stadium, but I find myself hunting for the smallest ways to up my word count when arguing how Wiesel was his father’s only support in the concentration camp. The first essay I wrote this year was a personal essay. I was supposed to talk about a significant moment or time in my life and what I learned from it. I decided to write playing basketball which is something I have enjoyed from a very young age. More specifically, I wrote about my game winning three point shot. I can remember it like it was yesterday. We were sprinting on a fast break and our point guard passed the ball in my direction. Without thinking, I shot the ball from just right of the top of the key. The ball went in with ten seconds left on the clock and we won the game. That moment taught me that confidence can appear at any moment and positive self esteem will always benefit success. From this assignment, I improved my ability to make conclusions from everyday events. Creating a thesis statement is arguably the most important part of writing a paper. It states your argument and sets up the topics that will be discussed in the essay. Writing my book analysis on Elie Wiesel’s Night taught me a lot about writing a thesis and supporting it quoted evidence. The thesis statement always comes at the end of the introductory paragraph and should tell the reader what he or she is about to read. Something in writing I have always struggled with was not being straightforward. My writing tends to be either too abstract or just plain boring. Creating a thesis helped me find a middle ground. A thesis needs to clearly portray your argument and topics without putting them in a list. As I continue to work on thesis statements, my writing is finding a balance between being formal while also being clear and intelligible. Learning about how to write a college essay taught me some things that I had never encountered or thought of in English before. What type of paper does the college board want to read? Short or long? Formal or not? A college essay should be 650 words maximum because the college has so many essays to go through and will have 30 seconds to a minute to read your paper. This makes sense but was surprising to me because all of the essays I wrote in high school were at least 800 words. You are also allowed to be informal when writing a college essay. The college does not have enough time to interpret what the paper says. It needs to produce a straightforward and clear message. Also, contractions are allowed, which was a big no-no in English. Learning about college essays opened my eyes to another perspective of writing and showed me that informal writing is not bad writing. |