Response #1

My most significant writing experience occurred two years ago, in junior year of high school. We were assigned to write about a significant person in American politics from the 20 century for the culminating assignment in an American history class. The paper, as assigned, was supposed to be between 9 and 11 pages, not a short paper by any means. Papers in that class had historically been a challenge for me, with a C average across my previous papers. And “luckily” for me, I had chosen, as the topic of this most recent paper, former Senator Barry M. Goldwater, who had served as a senator from Arizona during the spans of 1953–1965 and 1969–1987. Mr. Goldwater happened to be my teachers “favorite person” and was worried that my paper, which she did not expect to be very good, would not do this great man justice.
With these expectations in mind, I broke my usual form of starting a paper a few days before it was due and started on the paper immediately. Every day I would either write anywhere form a paragraph to a page or go over what I had already written, refining my words and making sure there were no foolish grammar errors that would detract from my paper. I progressed in this fashion for about a month, up until the week before the paper was due. Feeling confident about my work, I decided to meet with the teacher to ensure I was on the correct path to an excellent paper, one that would do my teacher proud. After that meeting I was worried for my grade and the quality of my paper. As my teacher had said, I had all the facts necessary in my paper, but the formatting was all wrong. Luckily, I still had a week to get my paper together and was able to get the paper in and I did well on it.