New School: New English Class

Ok, so this essay was such a shock to me. First of all, never in my high school career have i had to write an essay that has to be a certain length. My English teachers in college always said "as many words as it takes to get the assignment done," whenever we asked how long our assignments were required to be. The only time I have ever written a paper that was longer than this essay was when we wrote our research papers yearly in high school. They had to be something like 2500 words i think. So for our first essay written in this class to be almost the same length was, obviously, somewhat of a shock.

My process was to read the essay, write about what i thought in the context of the assignment, and to write the paper. The only problem is, I procrastinated, of course. This is such a problem for me. I wait til the last day to do anything and everything I dont particularly want to do. And that always bites me in the butt. Like i woke up to go to the library and print out my document i had saved from my roomate's computer and saved it to the UM drive, but i ended up saving the wrong draft....ladadadada.....i hate making excuses. Especially when this is no one else's fault but my own for not starting on it earlier.

I dont know if this experience has changed me in the procrastination area, although i hope it has. I mean, i have procrastinated many, many, MANY times, and always said i would try to stop, but honestly, I never do. When it comes to the subject of the text changing me, well i hope it has. I found myself really liking what i read/wrote about. I found the essay way more interesting than the stuff we read in high school that was written 500 years ago. It was powerful, yet subtle and any time i can learn more about not judging others, i am on board because I really want that for myself. I think being judgemental is just about the sin of all sins if you ask me. At first, i was somewhat shocked by the fact that Griffith really wanted us to identify with Graner and realize that could very easily have been us. But I soon realized that he's absolutely right.

This experience has changed me as a writer in that I no longer have to abide by the no "I, you or we" in papers. I found it much easier to get my point across and felt much more connected to my paper, and more proud of it for some reason, being able to use these words.