As a student writing has always been a difficult task for me. During my time in high school, every paper I was assigned grew harder to do, overthinking and frustration took over me as I figured out how to write the perfect paper. Not overcoming my procrastination held me back from completing my assignments and organizing on time.

I am from The Bronx, where the public education we receive is not the best. Most teachers you get throughout your years of school probably won’t care what you get in their class. As for me, I went to a decent high school where my teachers pushed me to do my best. Although they did this, I still felt as though my writing skills were not where I wanted them to be. I always struggled with putting my ideas on paper. To me, it was always easy to say my ideas out loud but can never seem to manage how to write it. With my writing, I have always doubted myself and my ideas. I do not feel confident in how I organize my writing. I am always frustrated with the thought that I could do better, and this feeling has pushed me to the point where I did not want to write at all. When I get a paper assigned, I always get told to brainstorm and to find a way to structure my paper. Organizing is very important in a paper because it will be how you present your ideas. During my senior year in high school, my teacher always told me that I was a good writer but that I need to work on how I organize my paper. Most of the information would be scattered in different places and would not make sense. This would put me in a state of anger because this was the only thing that was holding me back from perfecting my paper, and it caused me to feel insecure and not believe in myself. I also, always compared myself with students in my class, I thought about how they didn’t have the same problem as me, which just made me feel worse about myself.

My writing skills were not put up to test, until my senior year in school. I can say this was a time my writing was not at its full potential. At least that’s what I thought, senior year. I had taken AP literature as a class. Going in, I had already felt out of place because of the students in the class. It was kids who never fail a class, who never get any grade below an 80. I went in thinking they were just going to think of me as an oddball. Going into AP was dreadful. Every fourth period I thought about how I was going to be all alone. The kids in my class would be in groups of fours or three. It was a small class, which made it worse. “Come in and find a group to sit with”. Said my teacher, as I walked in and looked, everyone was in groups. I felt as though I was excluded from their group for not being as intelligent as them. The only time I was never alone was when my teacher would convince me to get more involved and get me to be open in discussions. I would get happy because it was a time when I can ask for help, especially knowing my classmates were better at the material. While I was alone, I struggled to do the tasks. “Read the article and talk amongst your group about it” or “Read and answer questions”. It is something I would do alone, with no feedback from others to understand if I knew what I was talking about.

Even though I felt like this, I’ve had successful papers where I felt proud of myself for trying and overcoming my thoughts. During my senior year, one of the books that was mandated to read was Hamlet by William Shakespear. Since we were in a more advanced class, we read the version that was not translated into modern text. This was a big step for me because I had read Shakespear literature but modern version. It was new to me and I had to get accustomed to it. As we finished reading the play, we had an upcoming essay task. The task for this paper was to identify the tragic hero in the play and analyze their downfall. For me it was a task I understood, out of all the other ones we had been assigned. I understood the play very well that I did not find myself struggling very much. When I got my paper back, my teacher told me that it was a good piece but that I needed to fix a bit more and explain more. When she told me this, I was lost as what she meant by “explain it more”. Was my entire paper wrong? Was it full with ideas that did not fit with the topic essay? While I fixed it, I felt more confident every time. I was excited for my teacher to read the re-written paper and to get a grade that I deserved. The time came when I got my graded paper and the overall grade was a 75. I felt a bit disappointed because it was something that I worked hard and even asked for help. It did not affect me too much because I overcame this obstacle and this class. This was the last assignment to hand in and by doing this I felt relieved. As I grow older, I realize that writing is not an easy task to accomplish, it gets better with time and I was just starting to learn the basics. Even though I still struggle with my writing skills, as the years go by, I now know I will improve and will continue to learn new things.