Second Draft?

At the beginning of high-school, during freshman and sophomore year, I did not even consider writing a "rough" draft, brainstorming, or any other pre-writing exercises as an option for turning in essays. When big papers were assigned, the burden weighed on my mind until I started work on it the night before the paper was due. However, this seemed to be working at the time because I ended up making decent grades on the papers and had plenty of other points here and there for various homework and quizzes to bring up my average to an "A" or a "B" for the semester.

Then, junior year rolled around and I was taking AP English Language and Composition with Mr. Thomas. He stressed the creation of rough drafts and the usage of many different brainstorming techniques such as asking "Who,What,When,Where,How" about the topic you were writing about, or listing all your ideas on the topic for 5 - 10 minutes. We were forced to create Introductory paragraphs and rough drafts, bring them in, and have them peer edited by one or more fellow students. Missing one of these deadlines would not be too detrimental to one's grade, however, we were taught the importance of planning out our papers and putting more time into writing in order to increase the quality of our essays.

Finally, after going through the first three years of highschool, I was going into senior year AP English Literature with Mr. James. He gave us the option to turn in a rough draft to him, have him give grade it as if it were the final draft, and then turn it back to us for revision for the final deadline. This motivated me to create a rough draft for every paper we turned in and throughout senior year, I created rough drafts and turned them early, in order to make the whole writing process easier and get an "A".

As I progressed through my years of high-school, my teachers taught me the importance of pre-writing exercises, brainstorming, and outlining my papers. I hope to see more drafting, like we are doing now with crots, and peer editing, because having a fellow student read and help revise your paper is very insightful and helps you become a better writer, over the course of this semester.