Short Writing Assignment 1

Throughout my life I have had many experiences writing essays. I still can remember days in elementary school beginning to write my first essays. I feel it’s better to talk about my most frustrating experience first. I still remember like it was yesterday. It was my freshman year in high school. I think it’s important for me to say that I went to the same elementary school for 9 years so by the time I graduated I was very comfortable with my classmates and teachers and knew what they expected out of me. Well this essay was one of my first essays in my new school. I wrote a thesis paper about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I needed to do a lot of research for this paper and at that time I didn’t have much experience in that field and I feel that was partly what made it so difficult. But now thinking back on this paper, it wasn’t difficult because of the topic or work I had to do, it was more difficult for me, because I didn’t know where the bar was raised. I had no idea how long it should have been and how much of the sources I should have used. That was my biggest dilemma with that essay, but I made it through alive. My best writing experience was last year, my senior year of college. I was a retreat leader for this big trip my school does called Kiaros. As part of being a leader, I had to write a speech to the students attending the trip. This was very important to me, because I could write about almost anything that affected me that I wanted to share with my fellow classmates. It is a big honor to get this position and I was very happy about it. I was happy that this speech I was about to write wasn’t going to end up in some teachers desk with red marks all over it, but I was going to get the opportunity to read it with only myself proofing that paper before hand. This paper ended up being one of the best I have ever written.
You ask now which experience I feel I learned the most from. It’s hard to say, I learned many things from both. For example in the first experience I learned about writing a paper for a new audience, an experience where I had know idea what was expected from me. I think that was good practice for the real world. In my second experience I learned about being on my own. How I will have to act in the future not having a teachers or piers help correcting errors and organization with my paper and eventually giving a speech to a large audience.