For my college writing class (I’m still a junior, we just have college classes offered where I live) we recently turned in our first essay. Before you say, or rather think, anything, no, we haven’t had since September to write the entire thing. The first few months of the class was an introduction to what we would be doing throughout the year.
Our first essay this year was a narrative essay. We had to recount a story from our own lives as we lived through it. The challenge for this essay that we were given was that whatever life event we chose had to be before 2023. This was really a struggle for me as I personally think that some of the most interesting and easiest to write about moments in my life happened either during or after 2020.
After thinking for a while I decided to write about a funeral I attended in 2019. I thought it would be easier to write about this one than other things since it was almost the most recent date I could choose. As I started writing, I realized that I remembered less of the entire week or so than I thought. Still, though, I continued, relying on my parents to get the important information that I needed.
Eventually the time for peer review came around, and I was paired up with one of my friends in that class. We wound up going to the theatre (We were instructed to find quiet, out of the way places so that we could read them out loud to each other.) and sitting on the stage. I read hers to her first, and as she read mine to me I died a little internally.
The next day of peer review I was gone for a school trip, so I wrote down notes the next day during my study hall. By the end of the class I had given my peer review partner her essay back and had also received mine. When I flipped through and glanced at the reviews, it was mostly what I had expected. It was things like, “Be more descriptive here” or, “This section feels very awkward.”
I procrastinated on actually editing the essay until the weekend. I didn’t even really touch or think about it until the day before it was due, when I begrudgingly sat down on the couch and changed what I thought was necessary. Editing has always been my least favorite part of the writing process.
Eventually, though, after about an hour, I called it good enough and closed my laptop. I looked it over once more before I printed it off and turned it in, and I think I’ll get a pretty decent grade on it. Our essays haven’t been graded yet, but I honestly don’t expect them to be done for a while yet.
I think I’m going to end there for today before this becomes an essay in itself.
Kirstin Zaske, December 5, 2023