Nicholas J.

Smith
1/11/15
First Year Writing
Guided Self Placement Essay

Throughout my high school career reading and writing was one of

those topics that I had a love-hate relationship with. I couldnt stand the
amount of work I had to put into each writing assignment, but in the end
when I put in my best effort it was always my strongest subject. I really
learned to write strong work my first two years of high school in my first
upper level English class with a teacher that cared about each students
individual progress. I learned so much on how to write a proper essay I
always knew how to get started. By the middle of junior year, however, I
decided that I wanted to do engineering in college, so I grew tired of putting
in countless hours of work in for essays when I could focus more on math
and science. I knew that I could easily come up with an idea when looking at
a prompt, so I was able to still turn in quality writing. The many up and down
experiences with writing in high school have lead me to be very confident
about my skills as I take on college level writing courses and beyond.
From the beginning of high school, I set myself up to take the best
classes possible that my high school offered. I went to a small high school,
and I was best friends with the student who would soon be valedictorian, so I
was always doing my very best in my classes and I wanted to emerge as one
of the better students in my class. I started off freshman year with Honors
Foundations of English for my first English credit, a class that was supposed

to introduce us to next level writing and analysis. My instructor for this class
was very unique compared to other instructors I had in the past, and was
very different compared to the other staff members in the school. She was
very blatant and brutally honest, and really made us know how are writing
actually was. She made me loath English class, and I was always at a loss
with the work in the class. She was mean and sometimes we thought she
was crazy, but I soon learned she really cared about her students and their
futures. Later in high school she helped myself along with many other
students with the college application process. It wasnt until halfway through
freshman year where I really grew to appreciate this teacher after she helped
me one on one with my character analysis for Lord of the Flies, when I had to
analyze one of the main characters, Piggy. After having trouble getting
started, she made me think about the prompt question a different way. She
made think of questions that werent intended to be answered in the given
text, and taught me the importance of textual evidence and having my ideas
flow from one to another. She basically showed me how to think better
critically, and from this point on writing was a breeze to me. I was soon at
the top of the class, and I could easily pick up on a prompt right when it was
given out. I carried this confidence into sophomore year, which was at about
the same difficulty level as freshman year to me. Some literature, plays, and
films that I had to write an analysis for during those years were The Catcher
in the Rye, the Oedipus Rex plays, Romeo and Juliet, Schindlers List and The
Alchemist. Reading and writing was one of my favorite subjects at that time,

but I was soon in for a rude awakening when I made it to my junior year of
English.
In my junior year of high school, I had the English department head as
my teacher for Honors American Literature, who was also the teacher for my
senior year for AP English. She was known for being one of the hardest
teachers in the school, and most students only made it through one year
with her. Being as determined as I was, I knew I had to make it through her
classes to stay on the top of the class, so to work I went. Within the first two
months of school we went through three books and always had three to four
writing assignments going on at once. I was able to keep up at first and
submit high quality work, but towards the middle of junior year I couldnt
keep that level of work up to what I wanted to. I submitted an eight-page
analysis for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that got the only A in the
class, a hundred to be exact, after submitting multiple drafts and going
through three long weeks of work. This was the turning point for me with
English, and it started to be my least favorite class of the day after
submitting that essay. I still finished the year with an A, but my love for
writing was never the same.
Although I started to dislike writing essays and analyzing literature, I
still remained confidence because of the skill my freshman teacher taught
me. I knew how to write deeply and I could still submit very high quality
work, it just wasnt my priority as much as it used to be. I was going to be an
engineer, so me being a stubborn, stressed senior, I didnt put too much

effort into my English class. My As from my English classes before dropped

to Bs, and I would end up writing just enough to maintain my B average. I
knew what I was doing, and I remained the confident writer I was and I knew
that if I really needed to I could crank out one of the best papers in the class.
AP English was double the amount of work that I had in my previous English
class. We had 5-8 page journals, discussion responses, and two big essays to
write for every book we read. We analyzed classic literature such as The
Scarlet Letter, The Grapes of Wrath, and The Book Thief. We also had several
independent writing projects on a specific poet and whatever book we
wanted to pick. This was all to lead up to the AP English and Literature exam
in May, where our scores could potentially get us out of a college class. At
this time, English was not one of my priorities, so I only scored a three.
My past experiences with reading and writing gave me a relaxed
confidence about my abilities and what I can get accomplished with them.
After taking the highest level English classes possible in high school, I
became very confident submitting my essays. I knew how to create a strong
thesis and back it up, properly use and insert textual evidence, connect ideas
from different text, and many others. My confidence grew and I knew that I
could turn a strong essay in no matter how much thought I put into it.
Although I had sometimes disliked writing throughout high school, I am
confident in my abilities to succeed as I enter college writing classes.