Rough Draft

 I have never been too fond of writing before, mostly because I just don’t think I am too great at it. With knowing that English classes were never my favorite, I still took AP Lit my senior year and I don’t really think I should of.

I have never been very into writing, I liked science classes and history and math, just every subject over English classes. I never knew the right words to use, or how to conveniently put in rhetorical devices. I like the hands on kind of stuff, science labs like dissecting a pig, and just have always thought that my writing was never really good. AP Lit at the beginning of the year seemed a lot easier than I would of thought, we read books as a class and did weekly rhetorical device paragraphs on them, didn’t seem too hard. Ms. Boss was my teacher and she is the funniest teacher when the class is going good, but very strict when it comes to the class not getting stuff done. I have never had her before my senior year but I have always heard of her and how hilarious and awesome she is. She loved to tell us her life stories of her dad “Dick Boss” and just everything funny that happened in her life. With all of the class books we read we always got to watch the movie when we finished the book, when we didn’t have anything to do we watched movies then too. So AP Lit really isn’t as hard as I would of thought… Sweet! Until the class heard about the end of the year author research essay which was 10-15 pages long, oh no. How are we supposed to write about someone for 10-15 pages and we have never met them. This paper will be the biggest and longest paper I have written.

Ms. Boss brought in a cart of books from several different authors and we spent a whole class period exchanging through all the books to find an author that really interested us. We all had our own author and we had to research everything about them and incorporate it into our essays. The author Toni Morrison caught my eye, a Nobel Prize writer and professor. She mainly focused her writing on African American females, and the horrors they had to live through back when slavery was happening and the overall situations of their lives.

 “Be at the school at 6:30 in the morning tomorrow” Ms. Boss tells the AP Lit class.

“No way, that is way too early!” The class complains back.

“Well if you would like to catch the ferry then I suggest you get there that early.”

The day before our spring break the AP Lit class got to go to the University of Washington to use their enormous library. The smells of vanilla lingered the endless rows of old and new books, it really does look like a maze in there. It sure was confusing to find the right books we were looking for, but thankfully we found everything about our authors in one spot. We had to go through all the numerous books that have been written by others regarding our author, to try to see which pages and paragraphs will help us the most to grasp our knowledge of our authors’ writing ways. We photocopied the book pages and saved them onto our flash drives, once we got it done we were able to walk around and go get food. But I remember Ms. Boss saying:

“Be back at the bus at 1:30 or you are getting left here!” Jokingly.

When 1:30 came around we all huddled into the yellow school bus and sat back into our ugly brown seats. The fun part was all over, now we have to start the dreadful essay. If anyone knows me they would know that I sure do not like to get much of a head start on my school work, I loved to wait last minute on it and hope it was good enough. Once the last week came that it was due I thought “oh yeah there’s an essay due huh?” I sit in my room busting out my essay writing everything anyone would need to know about Toni Morrison, when and where she was born, what college she graduated from and why she uses the particular writing styles she does.

I hear everyone in class saying “Did you finish your essay?”

“Yeah I finished it like last week.”

While I was still working on mine, oh well its I get for taking so long. I get a good first few pages filled with information about the exceptional writer Toni Morrison, but it is so hard to write 10-15 pages worth. I search the internet with the smell and warmth of a cup of Joe sitting by my side hopelessly looking for more to write about. Once I finally finish my paper I turn it in the last day of school, the last thing I do before I never sit in one of the Kingston High School uncomfortable chairs.

I can honestly say I was a great procrastinator in high school, and I think AP Lit taught me to throw that away and do all my work on time, not the day/night before it was due. This is one of the most important pieces of writing that has impacted my life because it was the biggest and most time consuming essay I ever had to do and it was for a final grade for my AP Lit class. I didn’t get the best grade but at least I passed. Now onto graduation, goodbye high school.