Over the course of this semester, there was only one thing I dreaded besides finals: the Bloodchild rewrite. I wasn’t nervous that I would get a bad grade; I simply thought I would not write an essay to Dr. McCoy’s standards. Dr. McCoy expects alot from her students, as she pushes us to be the best writer we can be. As I talked to other students in the class, they explained to me that received similar feedback to what I recieved. This made me feel better because it showed i was not the only one in my current situation.
Dr.McCoy pushed back the due date of the Bloodchild rewrite to three weeks later and first I was overcome with joy, but looking back, I procrastinated way too much on this essay. As it was two weeks out from the due date, I decided to give the essay a look. Looking back at the essay after a month of growing as a writer, I realized how raw my essay was, and that I needed to further explain my ideas. Dr. McCoy told me in an email that sometimes it takes an essay to write an essay, meaning that sometimes writing down all your ideas on paper the first time will help you formulate an idea upon which you can rewrite your whole essay. For example, Dr. McCoy picked out a piece of my rough draft, calling it the “popcorn kernel”. In this case, the “popcorn kernel” represents the idea on what I could base my whole essay about. This metaphor illustrates the idea that one idea can lead to endless possibilities.
I would be lying if I said I did not struggle with this essay rewrite, as it really showed me my flaws as a writer. For example, it showed that I jump from one idea to another idea without explaining the first idea fully. It also showed me that my writing tends to be choppy, meaning I jump from from place to place. The last flaw it showed is that I need to further explain my evidence and how it connects to the prompt I am writing about.
This rewrite process has allowed me to work on my flaws as a writer. Looking back, I feel silly that I dreaded an essay rewrite so much, because now I have grown so much as a writer.