David Owens
Instructor Owens
ENGL 101
9 December 2007
Snapshot of a Writer/Teacher
When I got out of high school, I didn’t really know how to write an essay, despite
having been in all the honors English classes. In high school, or at least in my high school,
there were few enough students who enjoyed writing that, if a student had one or two
original ideas and a smart turn of phrase, she could get away with almost anything. I
certainly had never been told about the five-paragraph essay, and I usually just wrote to
amuse the teacher or myself.
My instinct for writing structures got me through the English 102 research paper in
college, but I didn’t really learn what academic writing was until my Shakespeare and
Chaucer seminar at Evergreen. The professor slammed my first paper with quite a few
sharp and sarcastic remarks, and I figured out pretty quickly what was acceptable and what
wasn’t. My analysis was more careful from then on. But what really taught me to write
was the fact that I had an actual audience for the first time ever. The professors had us
publish our bi-weekly essays in a notebook in the library, and other students not only read
them, but also responded to them. It was here I learned to keep the reader in mind and lead
them carefully through my argument without losing them or confusing them. If they were
going to respond to my paper, I really wanted them to respond to the idea, not talk about
the places they got lost or confused, or completely misunderstand my idea and so respond