Cox 1

Hunter Cox
Leslie Cook
English 2001
3 September 2014
I have never been a skilled writer. The factors that held my writing back has always been
curious to me. I remember struggling with the writing test in elementary school and not
understanding why my writing was not sufficient. Although I knew how to express myself in
speech, I typically struggled with finding a way to all of my thoughts in an orderly fashion. I was
an avid reader in elementary school and could answer questions in depth about the relatively
difficult books I was reading, but there was just something about writing that was harder than
anything else for me. The biggest problem was the organization of my ideas into one coherent
piece of writing as opposed to a list of all of my ideas; I tended to frequently repeat the main idea
while not connecting it with the text. I still struggle with the idea of organization today as a
sophomore in college. In this paper, I will write about how I have write in a more organized way.
In the 9th grade, I had a helpful English teacher named Mrs. Kain. At the start of the
semester, she told me that my papers were unorganized. The structure of the papers generally
had a main idea with some examples that went along with it. I was using the structure that the
teacher expected us to used, but the structure only worked well if it was implemented properly.
The problem that I had was organizing all of the points and relating them back to the main idea.
It was something new to me; most of my previous teachers had just told me to write what to the
prompt, and I did not understand the way it had to be arranged. I recall a paper in that class
about Elie Wiesels Night. The draft that I turned in was somewhat unorganized. Mrs. Kain tore

Cox 2
it to shreds and made me reorganize and told me made sure I related my examples back to the
main idea. I did everything that I was asked and got full credit for the final draft of the Night
analysis essay that was due at the end of the semester. Organization is still a problem for me,
even in college, and I have to consciously work at maintaining the order of my thoughts when
writing.
In my sophomore year, I was told to write in a specific process. My teacher always taught
us that we had to brainstorm our ideas and examples, then make an outline, then write a rough
draft, then revise the draft to make a final draft. The process was frustrating to me because I
found that if I just wrote, the ideas would come to me; my process was similar to the way that
Villanueva wrote in his community college experiences in Bootstraps. Villanueva said Then
sometime in the night the words would come. Thats how Ive always felt about writing. I
always have a general idea of the subject, but I never really dig into a paper until Im thinking
and writing a draft. I felt very akin to Villanueva when he said then hed use the completed
essay to type out an outline, feeling a little guilty about having cheated in not having produced
the outline first (109). The finished product of such a cookie-cutter writing process was
generally not the best for me. I almost always did the exact same thing Villanueva did. When my
teacher asked the class for my planning pages, I would always write out an outline so it would
appear that I planned my draft.
In the 11th grade, I had to do a portfolio consisting of four research papers that were done
over the course of the semester. Usually I procrastinated until the night before, and I wrote a
poorly organized rough draft. A common problem through all four of the papers was that I
repeated myself to emphasize a point and struggled to relate everything back to the main idea of
the paper. Because of my struggling to connect the examples with the overarching theme, I

Cox 3
tended to repeat my thesis in an attempt to relate the point I was making to the thesis. In a paper
about Gone with The Wind, I said Scarlett OHara is strong and independent woman at least
eight times. The first two papers in the portfolio had that problem in them. I rewrote them to be
much better after copious amounts of peer editing.
Although I realized that organization was an issue in the 11th grade, my papers were
organized acceptably, some of the time. It was only in college that I realized how to organize my
papers efficiently. In my freshman seminar class, I wrote the first of three papers that were due
and turned the draft with no thought towards the structure whatsoever. My instructor handed a
paper littered with numerous red-inked comments that my paper was wordy and unorganized.
With the next paper that was due, I discovered a writing process that worked for me. I wrote the
paper for the rough draft, and then I mapped out the structure of the paper to make sure that it
was well-organized and that I had expounded on the points made. The process of writing and
then organizing afterwards really helped the organization and flow of my writing.
In an assignment for my British literature class last semester, I was told to write an
analysis of any work that we read in the class that semester for a final paper. I chose write about
the ways that Jane Austen comments on the social issues of her day. I followed instructions for
the most part, showing my depth of understanding for the novel, but the paper was not organized
as well as it could have been. I had three points and three paragraphs that related back to the
main premise that Austen was using the observations of her main characters to comment on her
society. Every paragraph in the essay was built on the controlling idea of the paper. Strangely
enough, that essay was in the five paragraph essay format that I had appalled in high school.
Normally, Literature professors dont care for that type of essay, but she did not call attention to
the fact that it was a five paragraph essay. The only points taken from my grade was for not

Cox 4
doing the MLA conventions and integrating quotes incorrectly, so the organization of the final
paper was acceptable.
My essay turned out great; I got one of a few high grades in the class. Organization was
still an issue with that essay. In the rough draft I wrote things like Anne is bothered by Sir
Walters vanity, but I did not relate the observations back to Austens social commentary. I also
fell in the old habit of repeating myself by simply restating the thesis. Striving to get a good
grade in the class, I asked my professor for help, and she steered me in the right direction by
giving me advice about how to improve the structure. Her advice was to always relate it back to
the thesis. In the final draft, I could have connected the example to the thesis with more detail,
but I wrote a successful paper with good content connecting to the main idea.
In the future, I will focus more on organizing the paper after it has all been written. I will
also be aware of the fact that I sometimes just write whatever comes to mind and that some
things should be edited out to make room for things more relevant to the overarching premise of
the paper. With that in mind, I will be cognizant of the fact that sometimes my examples do not
only need to relate back to the idea, but they also need to be explained thoroughly so that I am
understood fully. Looking at back at my past writing experiences has allowed me to learn about
how to treat my organizational problems in the future.