As my hand curled tightly around the pencil, engraving words on the paper faster than I could think, the clock’s hands moved just as rapidly, much to my dismay.
“Time! Find a stopping point and turn in your essay.”
Sighing, I glance at the length of my timed essay: barely more than a page. This fell short of the requirements of being at least five paragraphs. Reluctantly, I got up and heeded the teacher’s words. My fellow classmates waited in line to turn in their paper and catching their essay length only fortified my disappointment. I need to improve myself.
With ninth grade coming to a close, next year's English classes became available. AP Literature and AP Language were listed as possible courses; literature appeared to be manageable, with the teacher stressing that it wouldn't impact your grade. However, Language specified that the course would elevate your essay performance, with damage to your grade. Given these options, it appears obvious which course would benefit me- Language. Yet if I decided to go through with my decision, I would undoubtedly fail to meet the
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It had to be impactful, euphoric, and stylistic. Then, the sentence would be read aloud to the class, so I said,
“The sunlight is beaming on the green fields, warming all in its presence.”
Mrs. X, the teacher, gave me some advice. She told me that the potential was there, but I was held back by conventional styles and that my word choice could be elevated. This continued into the the timed essays, where I tried to implement meaningful expressions into the analyses of certain topics. Slowly, I started to improve, but my growth was most evident in the daily sentence writing, where the class then graded each other’s writing on a scale from one to five. Halfway throughout the year, during December, I tried to construct the best sentence possible; after a couple minutes, I