Personal Narrative: Mrs. Graff's Clash In School

Throughout some point in our education, every student has gone through this dreaded moment. That moment where the screen is blank and there is nothing. When it is impossible to think of anything to put done. I, myself, have gone through writer’s block dozens of times. I think it was at its worst during my younger years. My worst case of writer’s block came when I was in fifth grade. My teacher was Mrs. Graff. She was usually very nitpicky when it came to grading. The smallest mistakes became devastating. A good paper would return to my desk bloodied up from the ruthlessness from Mrs. Graff’s red pen. My class had to write a paper on Wilma Rudolph and it was almost worth an entire letter grade. We had two weeks to write this behemoth

During the first day, I spent most of it trying to write an outline so I could organize my ideas well. The outline was basically blank; I knew nothing about Wilma Rudolph. I was focused but I simply couldn’t think of anything to write down. I wasted a crucial day of work. The next day, I had to become revitalized. I was able to write down an introduction with a strong thesis statement, but something just wasn’t right. I couldn’t stop my progress just to try to figure it out, so I kept going. It wasn’t until I turned in my rough draft to Mrs. Graff that I had realized that I had broken two of her top rules. Thou shalt not start a paper with a question, and thou shalt not speak directly to the reader. The terror in my eyes was evident across the room. Everybody knew that I was absolutely screwed and they felt bad for me. When I got my rough draft back from Mrs. Graff, it looked as if it was delivered from a war zone, soaked in red, and marked up unrecognizably. On the top of my paper next to my name was the grade I would have gotten if this was my final paper. It was a big, fat, and disgusting D-. I was mortified. How can I possibly dig myself out of this rut? There is absolutely no way I can rebound from this one within the week.