Yay! I finally finished my stupid essay! Oh, how I HATE those things. I hated essays in high school and I hate them in college. The funny thing is that the assignment was to write a narrative essay about a place in our memory. That should be right up my alley, right? I like to write stories and I write a blog about my life. Should be simple, right? haha. No.
The thing I don’t like about essays is what makes them difficult for me. All the rules and ‘this has to be in there’ and ‘that has to be written a certain way’ and ‘you have to include examples of sentence structures you learned in the assigned reading’. Bah. Too many freakin rules. I just want to write.
Yesterday, I was having a really hard time getting started with my essay. I had an idea of how I wanted to start the paper, but I was having a hard time getting that idea down onto the paper. I was so frustrated by the time Troy got home from work because I didn’t get a single thing done with my essay. Well, I had written out notes on how my teacher wanted the essay structured and had written an outline of the place I was going to write about. I had two and a half pages of outline. With all that, it should be simple to just jot it all down in sentence form. haha. Doesn’t quite work that way for me. I have to get into a rhythm before the words will flow out. Get me in the right circumstance and the right mood and I can write for forever. This is why some of my blogs are a thousand pages long. Other times, I just can’t get what’s in my head down on to paper. This is why I either have super short blogs or none at all. Though, sometimes the none at all is because I’m super busy and don’t take the time to write a blog. I write blogs in my head all day long, but most of them never see the light of day. That’s just how my brain works, though. I don’t talk to a lot of people, so I just write blogs in my head. I used to carry a tape recorder around and record stuff that I was thinking as I drove too and from work, but then the batteries in my recorder died and I got out of the habit. Some day I will have children who will listen to those and think I was a strange little person. haha.
Anyways, back to my horrendous essay. I did finally finish it and I’m so happy the rough draft is done. I’ve submitted it to my teacher and now just have to wait for the peer review. I’m fully prepared for lots of corrections, but I hope there aren’t too many. I really honestly am curious if anyone will notice that my paper is a full half-page too long. It was supposed to be 5-6 pages, but mine is 6.5 pages. Oops. I didn’t feel like going through and editing out half a page, so I just submitted it as is. I know that’s super lazy and not the proper way to do it, but I really hate writing essays. People will peer review it and tell me what changes need to be made and then I’ll tweak to get rid of that extra half page before the final submission o Friday.
Ugh. Peer review. That means I have to review and critique two people’s essays. Critiquing is easy. Critiquing in a way that doesn’t offend people, that is hard. Most people take criticism to their writings very personally and it’s hard to provide valid feedback when you’re worrying about hurting someone’s feelings or upsetting them .Hopefully I will be one of the ones who doesn’t get all bent out of shape. I think the only thing that would super upset me is if they told me my topic subject was stupid. The topic was to write about was a place of memory, somewhere that has meaning. I wrote about my grandpa’s house in Colorado and what it looked like. I wanted to go a little more into what we used to do there, but I ran out of room. I got through describing his three living areas (the trailer, the garage and the cabin) and the memories I associate with them, but I wasn’t able to get into big descriptions of the valley, the mountain streams, the little rock cave we used to play in and our treks on the mountain roads. Maybe someone will give me feedback that will help me know which parts that I included can be taken out and then I’ll have room to talk about the mountain more. Who knows. I guess I’ll see what the thoughts on my paper are in two days.
Well, now that I’m done, I think I’ll go to bed. My throat has been hurting all day and I’m pretty tired. I think after I make Troy’s breakfast tomorrow I will take a nap.
UGH!!!!! I can’t. I have to write ANOTHER stupid essay! At least this one is just an executive summary of a business article along with what I learned from the article. That’s for my business class. I’ve been reading business articles since Saturday and I still haven’t found one that is interesting enough to write about. *sigh* I guess that is my plan for tomorrow: stalk business magazines online until I find an article that sparks my interest. Wish me luck. I hate essays.
