WHAT? There is something called a Writing Process that require a student to write more than one draft?

         Flashback to the olden days….My high school English teacher gives us the assignment to write an essay, a standard five paragraph essay about a topic we had been discussing. It was due a week after it was assigned. When I got home, that night I put the essay off. That was my first BIG mistake. Then, I kept putting the paper off each day until finally the day before arrives and in class that day my teacher reminds us that we have a paper due tomorrow. So that night when I set to work, I have massive writer’s block. Somehow I managed to crank out the paper in mere hours, working late into the night. My second BIG mistake was not really editing the paper. So after I handed the paper in and waited anxiously for the grade to come back, I received a C on the paper. I couldn’t believe it was a C! I was astonished and I shouldn’t have been, because I wrote the paper last minute. There were obvious mistakes in the essay that I caught upon reading it after it had been graded.


        Obviously as my little story above shows, I am a procrastinator and don’t really have a writing process. I truly am a prime example of the coined term a “One-draft wonder” writer. I am now in college and I know that this process of waiting until the last minute and then just vomiting anything onto a paper just to get it done it not only going to guarantee me a C, but maybe even lower. Upon reading, The Transition to College Writing by Keith Hjortshoj, my eyes really opened up to the fact that I have no writing process and that is a habit that needs to be corrected. I am a big offender of generalizations, because I don’t proofread my work and don’t put enough time into organizing and making my point clear throughout my paper. Hjortshoj says “In general, teachers view typical student papers to be comparable to a rough draft that needs further thought, development, revision, end editing” (57). I am am sure many of my teachers had thought this about my work, but I know that I can do better. I have been in many advanced English classes so I know that I wasn’t put there for no reason, just I always tell myself that I will do better on the next essay, but the next time is the same last minute essay. I really do need to follow Hjortshoj advice when he states emphatically “Start to work as early as possible” (74). Even though it seems like a cliché this advice for me is “easier said then done.” I always take the “easy way out” and write one draft.


         I haven’t written my first essay draft as a college student at the University of Richmond, but I know that the one draft approach is not going to allow me to receive the grade I desire. The teacher is going to chastise me for writing just one draft and turning it in because it is an elementary mistake. I have good ideas and now I just need to show that in my writing. I want to make a good impression on my teacher with the first essay I hand in. I don’t want my teacher to think that I am lazy or be disappointed that I could write better. Also, in The Transition to College Writing, Hjortshoj says “Teachers sometimes find even the best writing in the class disappointing and according to their real standards for good writing, teachers may consider average papers to be poorly written” (57). Nobody wants his/her teacher to think that about him/her. I know that multiple drafts of each of my essays has to be accomplished and even then the essay might not be up to the high standards of my professor, but at least I tried. So really the case and point is don’t wait until the last minute to write a paper… If you get a C in a high school English class, then you are in big trouble for college!