I assumed being placed into first year college writing was a mandatory class coming into The University of Tampa as a freshman. I did not realize I was being placed into this writing class because my SAT or ACT scores were too low. At first I thought that I did not need to be in this class, it was just a waste of time, but then one day I received an email saying that I was able to take a challenge exam. I presumed I was a good writer because I was editor-in-chief of my high school newspaper and managing editor of the yearbook. While I was getting ready to go take the challenge exam, I sat down and thought carefully to myself that maybe I was placed into this class for a reason. So for that being, I decided to not take the exam. I thought that I could use more practice on my writing style, on sentence structures, and grammar since English was one of my most difficult subject in school.
Being editor-in-chief for the newspaper back in high school taught me to write in a different format. Our thesis, which is called a lead, was at most 25 words. Then after the lead each paragraph was about a sentence or two. I was taught to be creative and to write to catch the reader’s attention. Now when I write research papers or a term paper, it is extremely hard for me to break away from my newspaper style of writing. Newspaper was a big part of my life, so that was the only thing I paid attention to in high school. I stopped going to my classes to get stories for the paper or to take pictures for the yearbook. I was never in class my senior year and I did not care because I never got in trouble for missing class. I was the typical high school student who was able to get away with practically anything. Since I was never in my English class, I never learned the necessities that would prepare me for college writing. That’s when I decided to just to stay in first year writing and to forget about the exam.
One of my weakest points in English are understanding verbs, adjectives,...