Coming into Wesleyan, I believed I was an “okay” writer – good enough to pass a college class. My confident belief that my writing abilities would translate acceptably from high school to college was unfortunately thrown out the window when I received the results of my first college essay, which happened to be in a music class. When the assignment was first assigned, I decided to turn a new leaf compared to high school and put my best foot forward and maximum effort to write a decent essay; henceforth, I spent a couple of days writing and rewriting the essay until I was satisfied. The result: a stiff D+.
Looking back, an essay that I believe would most likely have received an A in high school didn’t fare so well in comparison to college. When I received the grade and comments for the essay, my jaw dropped; I immediately called my parents to report back. Under the guise that I could auspiciously get through and potentially ace college, with minimal effort was disregarded. I collected my thoughts, pivoted, and decided to talk to the professor after the next class. When I talked to him after class, he gave his thoughts to me bluntly; my writing simply wasn’t good enough, and he referred me to the writing center. Taking his advice, I went to the writing center for every essay moving forward, and, unlike me, decided to actually try and practice my writing, understanding how I could improve my clarity and flow. Such as trial by fire, I slowly improved my writing over the next semesters. Lucky for me, being a government and history major, I had a lot of writing ahead of me, so recognizing very early into my undergraduate years that I had to practice my writing was a fortuitous experience.
