I have been reading my classmates blog posts, and the struggles of reworking the Blood Child essay is a reoccurring theme. I sometimes let frustration keep me from: working on assignments, sharing my work, and communicating to my fullest potential. It took me a week to look at my Blood Child draft after Dr. McCoy’s revision. I knew I submitted something that wasn’t high quality, so I didn’t want to read the comments she sent.
Reading the comments Dr. McCoy left was tough. She said things that I expected she would say, but I didn’t want to read them. I wanted to crawl back into my turtle shell and hide from the essay. The draft I submitted was a brainstorm, and needed a new claim. I was frustrated because I now had to rewrite my entire essay. I wanted nothing to do with the essay at this point. Dr. McCoy brought up the essay in class and said she understood how frustrating revision is and time consuming. She lengthened the due date to help us, which I appreciated. After class, I decided to give myself a week before revising the draft, because I needed a break from the essay. I knew it would take time to think of the “cake part to go under my icing.” I have learned when writing quality pieces, you have to give yourself time to breathe. If you don’t give yourself that time, then you end up drowning in procrastination because “you can’t do it.”
I was on a walk that week and was thinking of current world problems and then BOOM! The world problem related to Geneseo and Blood Child. I now had myself a claim and so what for the essay. I felt excitement about the essay for the first time. My confidence was back and I rewrote my essay. I was proud of my rewrite, but was reluctant to meet with Dr. McCoy to go over it. I didn’t want the cycle of failure to start all over again. If she doesn’t like the draft I spent so much time on, then I will be defeated again. Looking back now, it was silly that I didn’t want to show her because her thoughts would only better my final draft and grade. I am still working on my bad habits, and I hope addressing them in this blog post will help me end them for good.