My First Step Into College Essay

As I have started my college career I noticed that the writing is a lot harder than it ever has been before. More in depth, more to do and of course the deadlines and due dates are much shorter. Time and time again I’m reminded that my time management skills have really brought down my writing ability and that I need to apply myself to my writing more to avoid failing a paper or even a class. My experience in first taking English 1100 and having to retake it have pushed me to better manage my time and focus on writing well put together essays that are college level. I learned that the whole structure of this class is a little bit a new experience and some I have done before. Just like everyone, I’m not perfect, I have strengths, and many weaknesses in my writing that I could improve on but I would really like to improve my writing. Last semester was a hectic and not very good start to my college career because I failed to deal with the pressure from the expectations given by my teachers, and my parents. The teacher gives the due dates and the instructions to the students, me included, but the only thing I could seem to follow perfectly is the deadline aspect of the papers. That was an important yet easy expectation to follow because if you did not turn it in on time then you don’t get a grade for it basically, which is something I didn’t want to let happen, although my lack of time management skills did not help the content of that essay live up to the teachers expectations. I have learned from this that it is hard to finish a paper when you get home from work at 10:30 dead tired, and you stay up till one in the morning finishing it when you could have done it on your day off and not have had to worry about it the night before. That was after the two days of pre writing I did for the paper. It was another narrative but more personal. It was about either a place or person that is significant in your life. I chose my girlfriend, I love her to death and I don’t go out much so she was the only thing listed under the prompt that I could write a significant and relevant to the prompt narrative. It was going well I was asking my girlfriend for help as far as proofreading and editing. It was great to have her there because she is a much better writer than I am. That paper was going well until I had to stay up late the night before to finish it. Needless to say I didn’t feel good about how it was going to turn out and I was kind of right. I was given a C minus, mostly for a lot of spelling issues and run on sentences, which could have been fixed if I did not have to rush to finish the paper and if I would have hit the spell check button. I fell a little short of my parent’s expectations who expected C plus’s, B’s, and A’s out of me. It was a little hard telling them my grade and explaining why it was so low and how I should have taken more time on it and how I should not have slacked off. As hard and annoying as it was to hear it they were right, I couldn’t slack off and pass the class. Unfortunately I couldn’t buckle down in time enough to save my grade and I ended up failing the class with a C minus which for my major is not passing. Through out the rest of the semester I did improve my writing later on especially personal essays and comparison reflections the relate to me. I did also learn that by fixing my time management skills and taking more time in the whole writing process improved my last two papers which were a research essay and a reader reflection of a text I received a B and a B plus which was surprising to me but was the reward for my learning to apply myself and handle the pressure of the expectations given to me by my teacher and my parents. Throughout my first semester of college in English 1100 I have learned how important the expectations that my teachers and parents give me are. They are set in place so that I can grow as a better, more organized student, as well as growing as a writer and better understanding what makes a good essay, the experience taught me a lot and now I am ready to apply myself and redeem myself.