What Did I Just Write?

I ask myself this question a lot sometimes, and a lot of the time it comes in different forms. The question ranges from writing, obviously, to what I say, do, read, and choose. When I read over the essays I wrote this past year, I kept thinking to myself "what did I just read?" and I'm sure I could have read over it a hundred times and still made no sense of it. Accordingly, I was curious as to how bad it was before this year: how terrible my essays and responses were during my Freshman and Sophomore years. I wasn't disappointed in the confusion the offered me.

Writing has never been one of my strengths. While I excelled in classes like math and science with slightly more definite answers, the concept of no true right or wrong in English always eluded me. So when it came down to writing papers, I ended up sticking to generic structures and bland development. Thus, a formulaic approach would come over when writing in class and sometimes at home. This was further perpetuated by the teachings of APUSH last year, where every essay was basically the spewing of facts onto paper. I have tried to move away from this a little bit this year, and hopefully I will be further along the road when the AP test comes along. Starting late last year, but really beginning early this year, I started brainstorming before I started writing an essay. I always thought this step was merely a time consumer, but have come to understand that writing down passing ideas, no matter how seemingly irrelevant helps a long way when actually writing. So hopefully by the time AP's come along, I don't walk out of the room thinking "What did I just write?"