9 Honors English
Water for Elephants Essay
The Water for Elephants essay was my first essay I ever took in 9 Honors English. I worked with my two other classmates and was happy to see what was needed and work with people who already had past experience with these essays. I always look back on this one in specific to help myself improve in writing.
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The Help Essay
I found this essay a little easier when it came to finding pieces of evidence. The timing was a little stressful though.....I was glad to have seen the prompt a few days in advance because I had time to think. Deciding which character to be my topic was a little challenging because I didn't want to use an obvious character. I think picking a smaller character in the novel made me a little better at finding small details in the books I read after that.
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9 Honors Year Evaluation
The Silence of the Lambs
Best (Unknown Citizen)
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I do not believe that this was my best essay. There was a lot of potential in it, but it fell short its quality and wording. The Silence of the Lambs was a great book and the prompt that was given for this essay was perfect for the reason behind the name. The explanation could have been explained in three easy sentences and the dissecting of the meaning was right there in the conversation (between Hannibal and Clarice). Unfortunately, I could not just simply write what Hannibal Lector and Clarice Starling were saying and call it mine, so I tried with the minimal amount of time I had to use some of it as my evidence. Falling short with that as well, I believe I made the metaphorical meaning behind the name more confusing than it should have been. I quickly rushed with the conclusion because I was running out of time and did not do the name justice.
It To say the least, this book was very long. I thought for an introduction I would have to explain a great deal of the plot(s) so the reader of my essay would understand the many concepts and conflicts. I overreached my time limit with the supposed-to-be brief plot summary and was running out of time on the rest of my essay. I started this book over the summer and by the time I finished, I realized that I never marked the pages of key events, making it difficult for me to find PPE without wasting all of the limited amount of time. On top of that, I am a slow writer. I wasn't so confident as I turned it in and decided (with perfect timing of extra credit opportunity) that I would rewrite a new and improved It essay, Which I would say is my best essay so far.
(Improved "It" essay) . The Unknown Citizen
The Unknown Citizen was a good essay for me because it could have been interpreted in many ways. The prompt was simple and all the PPE I could use was the all in the poem which everyone annotated a day before. this essay was easiest because I didn't need to take too long flipping through the poem to find evidence, also being so short. Besides my revised version of "It", I think that this is my best essay.
. My People
"My People" is the poem I decided to use because even though it was only four sentences long, I found a special correlation and meaning to it. I could've used a much longer poem but I decided to test what I am able to do with the potential in the poem I already chose. Looking deeper into the metaphorical standpoint, I knew that "My People" did have a strong message involving depression, letting go, and moving on. Where I struggled was finding things about the author, Carl Sandburg, because there wasn't too many articles or reliable sources to look at.
Worst (Silence of the Lambs)
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I reflect back on my essays and think that many things could have been improved. I improved in some things, taking the advice from each paper, but getting careless with other necessary details needed for an essay. I could have used my time more wisely by quickly doing the introduction and save more time for the rest. Another time management concern was flipping through my book to find pieces of pulled evidence for a claim I made. In the future I will sticky note the pages that I think will be important and make sure it is more efficient than what I have been doing. "I quickly rushed with the conclusion because I was running out of time-". in a lot of my essays, I did not have an attention grabber. I know now that if I could have put in an attention grabber just by simply quoting a line from the book. For example, "'-to think that childhood has its own sweet secrets and confirms mortality, and that mortality defines all courage and love.'(King, 1090)." Rather than get better, my essays seemed to lack small things such as attention grabbers or lead ins. Therefore, I believe my mistakes will make me a stronger writer and make me look closer at detail and to reference the keyhole format more.