My first essay was a major success. I was the hotshot freshman who felt like he had it all. My professor liked my About Me post and I had just earned my first A. I was on top of the world and I let the fame and success get to my head. I hit rock bottom, lost my touch. This is the story of how I got it back.
On September 15, I submitted my first revised essay. This was the best essay I would submit all semester. This essay had it all: the critical conversation, the quotation sandwiches, direction, style, etc. Although this essay was still far from perfect, I had the most fun writing this one. I threw in fun phrases such as, “While Carr neglects to consider the positive contributions the internet holds, Fitzpatrick danced with them,” and I enjoyed writing this essay. This was my first college essay and I didn’t know how to write them yet, so I just wrote like me.
Essay one had its flaws: improper citations, ambiguity, clutter. But what this essay lacked in, it made up for in style, direction, and flow. Knowing those were my strengths, I worked to capitalize. Essay two came around, and I was in for a nasty surprise. I was not as passionate about my thesis in essay two, and I didn’t know how to drive my thesis forward. My argument felt lazy and stagnant, having no direction or destination in sight. It felt like the high school bucket filling strategy, and I would simply repeat the phrase that Bechdel “tells her own story.” The argument in this essay had no direction, and I relied too much on my playful style and flow that served me so well in my About Me post and my first essay.
Soon after, Essay three was upon us and my writing suffered a similar fate. My essay was fixated on proving one major claim, my thesis. Instead of proving one thesis, my essay should have proved multiple baby theses that support my main thesis, as essay one had done. Essay three was filled with one claim that read “Hamid fails to foster understanding of the lives of refugees.” Not only was that claim false, but it was the only claim I was making throughout the entire essay. That being said, my essay, again, had no direction, and my style could not dig me out of this one.
Though essays one and two fell short, I certainly learned a lot from them. Over this semester I learned how to create correct citations, began cutting clutter, and got more specific with nouns instead of using phrases such as “this.” I learned a lot about my style and writing over the semester. But most importantly, I learned that without direction and thesis development, style can only do so much. Essay four follows a different fate. I am passionate about this essay’s thesis as it develops throughout the essay. I used my skills of academic writing and I supplemented them with my research and analysis to create an essay that will be leagues better than essay one. I’m back baby.
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