Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Revised essay

           I was at the age of 16 going into 17 when I realized that the transition from high school to college is a major turning point in my life. High school was really something that I did not take seriously and thought that it would not affect me if I messed up a few times. I also thought that high school was just a continuation of all the other grades that I passed. My major life as a student starting to kick in when I was in 11th grade. In the 11th grade this is when you start to get yourself ready for college and focus more on college work than the basic work you was already learning. In the 11th grade I took my sat for college. I did not know that the grade that you get for this sat would determine which college would accept you so honestly I just did what ever just to finish the test. I got a low grade on this sat and was accepted to LaGuardia community college which is not a bad school but also not the best out there from the experience I had. College is a worth while process that everyone should take seriously if they had the chance to and it all starts from the beginning of 11th grade and continues further.
            One of my worst experience I had when I started college is not knowing what I was suppose to do or what was suppose to be done because I was a new to the college life. I started off doing things on my own and in the wrong way. The first thing I started to do wrong was sign up for financial aid which I didn’t know that it had other parts that you should sign up for such as tap and grand awards to get more money to pay for your tuition. I had to stand in line and get help from others that wasn’t even sure them selves what I had to do or what was the next step I should take to be eligible for financial aid. I did not know how to register for classes either or what I was suppose to do in order to get the schedule of classes that I need to fit my specific major. I had a hard time picking which major I was interested in and after 1 year of deciding what I want to do I finally made a decision. From then I started to take classes that were related to that major which is radiology. I did not know that the school requires high grades in order to be accepted to this program and most of all I did not know or was not notified that there was no professor to teach this specific major. The advice that was given to me was to take other classes outside that major in that time being or I would just have to wait until the seats would be available for the radiology major. So therefore I wasted one year of school and I took classes that would not even be necessary towards any other major if I was to switch. After deciding what to do I switched to early childhood education which I thought would be better for me because since I was little I always wanted to become a teacher. So I had to start all over again and make back up the credits that I needed. I also had to take different sets of classes toward my childhood education major.
            As for the three years that I have been in this school my experience was horrible. Some of the worker in the school can not help you with one issue so they would transfer you to someone else who is not even sure can help you but they still advise you to go anyways. As per the change of information that the facilities are supposed to know to help other students they are not current and updated with the correct information. This was with an issue I had when registering for classes on the CUNY first website and was not allowed to. When I called the school to find out what is going on the person told me that she is not sure why it is not working and I have to come in to solve the issue. When I came in that was when they mentioned that they had changed the course section and they have to enroll you manually. So I was thinking to myself why couldn’t they update me with this info before hand instead of my worrying and trying to figure out what is going on. As per my high school everything was done and all ready for me. I did not have to worry about my schedule or anything. Everything was taken care of by my guidance counselor and delivered to me as soon as possible. I understand and noticed that college is a way of being independent and having everything done on your own. This is why it made a big change in my life when I was moving from high school to college. It not only affected me physically but it showed me that not all the time in life things would be easy you eventually would have to face hardship sometime in the future.
            My life differed as a student with the transition of high school to college. Several tasks were performed to better me as a student and to reach to future goals. These tasks made me realize the differences between going to a school that has everything ready and done for you and another school that you are just independent and is required to know everything before hand. After all my life as a student this made me a better person today. It also made me want to go back if I had the opportunity and try to fix the part where I did not take up much interest in and how it would affect me later on in life. 

1 comment:

  1. Bibi,

    This has improved dramatically. I think your descriptions of problems you've had at LaGuardia are very effective. they also made me very sad and angry for all our students. I am so so sorry you have been put through so much nonsense. You are not alone. Many f our students feel this way. LaGuardia has some great things going on, and there are good people to get help from. Unfortunately, many students don't find the resources they need at the college until it's too late. This, to me, is an argument to better fund CUNY. We are all stretched too thin.

    There are two things I am concerned about in your essay:

    1. You need to work on your LOCs. Use the Writing Center. Read books or newspaper articles or ANYTHING to get more immersed in language. This paper still sounds so much like someone talking. It makes sense, and I'm glad you are using this strategy to get started, but remember to use retrospective and projective structuring! And a tutor at the Writing Center can be just the right trick for that. Go use the tutor as an outside reader. Tell him/her you are working on sentence structure. You'll learn alot -- and turn all that great talking into a professional piece of writing.

    2. One aspect of revision I want you to understand: You wrote a whole new middle part, but kept pretty much your exact same intro and concluding paragraphs. It reads like you just stuck information into an earlier draft of an essay, but did nothing to properly reframe the whole...and the content of the intro and conclusion are actually quite different and feel very displaced and off-topic.

    This is not what we mean by revision, actually. You have to, as Perl just told us to, go back over things and think about continuity, structure, and how it will feel for another person reading it. Keeping the old essay and plunking new writing into the middle of it is NEVER ever ok. It never works. Any time you make ANY change, you have to go back and check the flow of the WHOLE essay—start to finish.

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