This past year in English has been rewarding and self-fulfilling. I entered the year as a new and improved Poppers in writing essays. A glance at my first paper- an essay on Ender's Game- and my last one in 9th grade, the This I Believe essay, is a great example of the incredible differences in my writing which quickly improved as a freshman. However, entering sophomore year I was struck with the false belief that I was done learning about how to write and that from then on would just be about gaining more experience. How wrong I was.
Although difficulties arose sometimes, I overcame this with newly found confidence, partially thanks to two Donald Trump articles supporting him which I wrote when he was still expected to come back to reality and drop in the polls. Now Trump's the presumptive nominee. I truly feel that I accomplished a lot and reached new levels. Essays now come naturally to me- I
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I felt that writing about chess, something which I am highly knowledgeable in, often to the level of expertise, allowed me to find a comfort spot. I cruised through the essay easily, exceeding the normal 400-600 word ‘limit.’ However, when it came to things I am not nearly as knowledgeable in, like the argument for teenagers over 16 or so to have the right to vote, I underperformed. In that specific essay I did not feel comfortable, and it felt like I was trying to get to the word limit rather than actually writing and seeing how many words I had. The essay was also somewhat poorly written; there’s a reason it did not make it into my portfolio. This demonstrates that I performed well when I was in my comfort zone, speaking my mind, and not when the essay topic was something which was of no interest to