Tae-Seong Johnson
M. Holt
UNIV-150
11 September 2014
The High School Experience
Some of us might say that high school has adequately prepared us or college, but in my experience, high school did not adequately prepare me for college. I strongly feel that the reasons are because my high school counselors failed to promote Advanced Placement (AP) classes earlier, lack of work structure encouraged bad habits, and the dynamics of scheduling compared to college, is very different.
Taking AP courses are a very important part of high school, especially when one is thinking or planning about enrolling into college. AP classes are where we can determine if we can handle the pressure of college level study. However, I feel that I was a little bit too late to experience AP in my high school career. My high school counselor failed to promote the AP courses in my junior year of school, but instead promoted AP courses in my senior year. I did not have enough time to know he speed and pressure of the college level study.
High school has promoted bad habits such as procrastination, tardiness, and not developing good reading habit. High school works does not require much effort. We tend to procrastinate and get the work done last minute because it does not take much effort to get the homework done and do a good job. In high school I did not have many reading assignments, I had a lot of writing assignments. I think that reading is equally as important as writing, and I feel that there should have been a balance between the two. College is mostly about how individuals can read and observe the material. In my years at high school, I could not acquire those skills.
Another factor that bothered me about high school was our course set up. We take about seven to eight set courses every year, while in college courses are divided into five to six per semester. The speed of learning is twice as fast as the speed we go in high school. Not only is the speed different in high school, we have to spread our concentrations over eight different courses that are not beneficial to each student, and seem almost meaningless. This brought me more stress and gave me no preparation for college.
High school might have somewhat helped, but in my personal opinion, it is our responsibility as the student to grasp and learn good habits for the future. As I mentioned above, college preparatory classes in high school such as AP or International Baccalaureate (IB) is preferred just to get a sense of how college courses really are. Reading habits are equally as important as writing habits, which in high school, was rarely assigned. The lack of reading assignments affected my reading and writing skills negatively. In result, my reading and writing levels are not advanced enough for college. Because my focus was spread out across eight different subjects in high school, it was hard for me to truly focus and excel in my high school career. High school failed to adequately prepare me for college.
COMMENT SHEET NUMBER ONE COMPARISON OF FINAL DRAFT ESSAY ONE AND EVALUATED DRAFT ESSAY ONE Using the scale below, please rate questions one through five. Place the appropriate letter in the blank provided at the end of each question.
A. strongly disagree
B. disagree
C. neither agree nor disagree
D. agree
E. strongly agree
1. Because I received only minimal guidance from the instructor concerning the initial submission of essay number one, I struggled with the rough draft of the essay. A
2. I felt confident about my writing skills when I submitted my final draft of essay one. B
3. When I received my evaluated copy of essay number one, I was satisfied with my score. C
4. After reviewing the evaluated copy of essay number one, I recognized that many of the weaknesses pointed out were in areas with which I am familiar. E
5. I found peer review to be a valuable component of my writing process. E
After comparing your rough draft to the evaluated final draft of essay one, you should be able to gauge the state of your writing skills at the start of the semester. Provide a well-structured paragraph in response to each of the following (two separate paragraphs).
How did the comparison help you to identify your writing strengths?
-When I compared my essay, I realized that my transitions to each paragraph, and answering the essay prompt were my strenght. Transition and being on point is sothing that I figured out by writing. I have never had difficulty transitioning or staying on topic. I could find out my strength when my professor wrote some encouraging comments on the corrected essay.
How did the comparison help you to understand your writing weaknesses?
-There were couple of mistakes with comma splice, grammar, punctuation, word choices, creating “run-on sentences”, and parallel . Before submittimg the essay when I read through the essay one, I did not see any mistakes; however, when I saw the corrections, I was shocked. I realized that my writing needed to be chacked frequenlty to be on the right track.
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