Personal Narrative: What I Learned In My High School Classes

Entering college as a junior in High School has others expecting great things from you. But what I learned in my Highschool classes doesn’t amount to the expectations, grading, and teaching of college level courses. In my old High School English classes, expectations and grading were a lot less harsh. We did not have to cite information all but once or twice, and we primarily used much of our class time reviewing books, movies, and authors. All my English classes were more analytical than formal writing. However, coming in to English Composition 1010 hit me like a ton of bricks, showing me that there is much more to English than just reading a novel and discussing it in a classroom setting. It helped shed some light on bad writing habits and

For example, in my first week essay I had many formatting difficulties including titling, font, double spacing, labeling, and citations. Citations were particularly difficult for me when starting English 1010. Primarily, because MLA formatting was basically a new subject for me. In my High School classes I eerily remember going over MLA formatting in a week-long writing prompt, but was never forced to stick with it after that paper was submitted. I feel this hurt me and put me at a disadvantage to my fellow peers, and other students. Another easily remedied mistake I was regularly making was plagiarism. Not only is this frowned upon in the class room, but is also illegal and has been a big problem for me. Citing the author incorrectly, and paraphrasing/wording to closely to the authors own words was the bane of my existence at the start of the semester. Besides illegal problems, other mistakes I had when starting English 1010 was forming a concise thesis and punctuation errors. Both thesis statements I had written for my Essay 1 rough draft and First week essay had been too broad and not focused enough on the given material. Each essay also contained a number of noticeable punctuation errors, most notable with commas. Arguably the most easily fixed mistake I found in my writing was implementing clichés. In both my First week essay and my Essay 1 rough draft I had implemented a cliché in my