I Hate My Life-Personal Narrative

Anne Lamott 's essay, “Shitty First Drafts” explains to its readers that all writers, even the best, can have “shitty first drafts.” The essay presents the proper writing process from the first draft to the final piece of work. Her essay is intended to encourage writers who are in need of direction when it comes to writing and to teach inexperienced writers ways to become more successful in writing. Anne Lamott uses her personal experiences to build credibility, figurative language to engage the reader and provides the reader with logical steps for the writing process.

After taking AP English III, I became better at organizing my papers, but realizing I need to improve my grammar skills and staying focused on my supporting points. All throughout my writing career, I was always thought to be an outstanding writer, especially using vocabulary above my grade range. Naturally, I would see myself as an excellent writer as well until I took Mrs. Bingham’s AP English II course. Mrs. Bingham always gave pointers, tips, and work to improve my class’s writing skills as a whole. I would submit each assignment with high hopes and secretly expect to receive them with minor or no markings or point deductions.

Now, of course I had APUSH at the end of the day. So it left me plenty of time to think about and become exhausted over the dread that was building up inside of me for just receiving back a test. I couldn’t focus in any of my classes, and didn’t think about anything other than “I can’t believe I failed.” The instant I walked into the classroom my knees almost buckled to the point where I collapsed. All I could do is sit in the corner with my hands on my head as Ms. Bradley said “Some of you did amazing on this essay! Others not some much, those who didn’t do as well need to see me so that we can talk about it.” I just knew that it was directed towards me, and the more I heard people react to their good grades on the essay the worse the butterflies in my stomach just increase in horror of my grade compared to the rest of the class. As Ms. Bradley walked up to my seat she set my paper down upside down making sure that nobody else saw my grade. All that did is make my situation even worse as she obviously didn’t want anyone else seeing my bad grade. As I turned the paper over my hand wouldn’t stop shaking to the point where I couldn’t read the grade on the front. Yet, when I finally calmed myself down to see the grade I was astounded. I had received a 95% on the paper. I knew nothing, and I got an A! How could that have been

As I look back over the past semester of English Composition, I realize that I have grown as a writer. Not onlyhas my understanding of the writing process changed, my whole attitude towards composition has too. This composition course has made a significant impact on my learning experience and has given me tools to take forward into my future educational and professional goals. Throughout this course, I have discovered things about myself as a writer and know some of my strengths and weaknesses. I now feel more prepared for future writing assignments, whether for work or for school. With the instruction given to me over the past few months, I have grown as a writer and gained confidence in my writing skills.

Throughout the entire course I stressed myself to get my assignments done as quickly as possible. I had the mindset that I would not accept anything lower than a letter grade of C because that is just how I was raised. As a result, I just caused myself to become even more stressed by doing something I was not even capable of because I already had 5 classes I was taking and a full-time job. I realized that in order to succeed I had to be aware and acknowledge my own potential. I learned that in some situations it is just best to settle for what is good for one’s self and that it is okay to not meet other people’s

Hook: Think of a time you overcame adversity. How did you do it? How did you feel? Why did you do it?

One of the proudest moments of my life came in 2012 when I received my Associate of Arts degree and graduated as the class valedictorian. I realize that for some people earning a two year degree may seem like no big deal, but the fact that I did it while incarcerated at San Quentin made it extraordinary for me. Before coming to prison, I had failed at my two previous attempts at junior college without earning a single unit. It would take getting locked up and separated from society,before I 'd start to buckle down. I was 33-years old when I completed my first Coastline College course in Geology and received an A. This milestone helped me to see the value in learning and gave me the confidence to go after an education I had all but given up on.

During the course of English 102, I took this year of the spring semester. I have accomplished a variety of goals I once thought were impossible. I have not only grown as a writer and a student but as an individual as well. I feel that through my experience of this English course, I have achieved knowledge and self-confidence to step out into the real world. In putting together my portfolio, I could definitely see that I have made an incredible progress from the foundation of this class. My practice of grammar, words and the general structure of my papers has improved massively. Reflecting on my strengths and weaknesses as a writer, as well as things I have learned in my own writing process is a big accomplishment.

I’m not very good at writing. This paper that you're reading right now was a struggle for me to think of it. If I really try and work and keep brainstorming I can write a great paper, but it takes me forever.

Songs can connect with how we feel and our experiences. Music has been a major part of my life ever since I was just a toddler. For me music has helped me express what I am feeling and who I am as a person. My therapy has been music, it has helped me through almost every problem I have faced. With listening to the song lyrics, we can get a true understanding of what the artist is trying to tell us.

I confirm that the work presented here is my own and is not copied from any source.

My writing process has changed tremendously over the course of this class. I feel more accomplished, confident and I feel sometimes that my ideas and thoughts just come in to my mind out of nowhere and I start writing about anything now. I pay attention to my punctuation and grammar more as I have polished them more now, not only when I write but then others write as well. I am constantly looking for errors and I highly think this is helping me a lot in my career. The comments from my instructor, the online material, my research, the online writing center and comments from other students in the discussion boards have helped me so much to improve my writing skills.

In my portfolio you will see an array of my work and hopefully the progress I have made throughout each piece of writing. The first essay you will see is my first piece of writing I created for this class. As you will notice it was very brutal. I had a lot of dead words, grammar mistakes and punctuation mistakes. In this essay we had to discuss how reading and writing has influenced us in some way. I was have always been a big writer, so I mainly focused on the writing portion on this essay. Looking back at this paper I realized one of two things, one, I used a significantly large

There I am sitting on my couch with a laptop on my lap. I have a paper due tomorrow and I have no idea what to write about. I put my fingers to the keyboard keys and start to type out the first sentence.

14 years have passed since I took my first steps into kindergarten. Back then, everything was all fun and games. Who would have known that time would fly as fast as the speed of light. In a blink of an eye, here I am now, writing an essay for my college application. Different ideas and thoughts popped up in my head, including the cliche introduction that I presented. Many of them I thought were good, yet there was not much to write about. Honestly, recalling and writing about an event that changed my life is not an easy task. There had been so much that have happened, and in a way or another, my life was changed for either the best or the worst. Desperate as I could ever be, I started looking into my drawers to find anything that might spark a memory. Then there was this blue round neck shirt that I found. Suddenly I remembered the events where I wore that shirt. First was a birthday party of a close friend, second was a sleepover at a relative 's place, so on and so forth. But then I ended up staring in midair for quite awhile. I recalled wearing this shirt during a school interaction. Weird as it may sound, that one significant day, changed my life. Not as a student, an adolescent, but as a man.