Marco Jimenez

Professor Ringo

UWP 001Y

7 December 2022

10 Minutes of Pain

I’ll be honest. Writing has never been remotely close to being a strength of mine throughout my time in school. Whenever I had been assigned papers to write, I’ve always viewed them as some chore that I had to get out of the way, an obstacle that I needed to overcome every once and a while throughout my courses. This attitude of mine has always resulted in me dreading signing up for the English/writing courses I have taken, the same way one dreads having to speak with their parents knowing that they are going to get scolded. If I could, I would have avoided taking any English writing classes in high school. Despite this, I always thought I could write pretty solid papers as much of a bother as they were to write. Unfortunately, my junior year English teacher Mr. Pyles would change that opinion real quick. I would find out in a rather embarrassing way that I was wrong and I would be humbled as to the quality of my writing skills. 

It was about a third of the way through the semester, a mere 3 weeks before the initial COVID lockdown in early 2020. We had just submitted one of our final rough drafts of a Witch Hunt Editorial paper we had written after finishing The Crucible. The prompt had been to research, analyze, and explain the effects of historical witch hunts/hysteria and compare them to that of The Crucible. Up until this point, I relied on my usual method of writing. I’d procrastinate until a day or two before the deadline. I’d go into my room, smelling of lavender from the freshener and leather from my baseball gear sitting in the corner by the desk. I’d sit at my wooden desk for the whole day, watching the sky slowly change from a cool blue to a dark starry night, and rather than write, I’d spend my time doing anything to avoid composing the paper. I’d stare at my wall, covered in sports and music posters, lit dimly by the light in the corner of the room. I’d go on my phone and take a “break” after every 30 minutes of doing nothing, filling the room with sounds of music or some random youtube video that I found. But unfortunately, papers can’t write themselves so I was forced to begin my research. I did a decent amount of research and connected it all pretty well to the prompt and The Crucible. I had created what I thought were some effective transitional sentences to keep a good flow and connect everything together nicely. Overall, I thought I had done an exceptional job and would even say that it was one of my better papers at the time. 

That unfortunate day, I walked into the small, yet bright classroom. The side and back walls were covered in poster papers each student had made about themselves and their goals for the year, mine was decorated with a baseball and soccer ball, as well as a giant clock that represented my goal of improving my time management. The front wall was covered with English posters and quotes, as well as many of Mr. Pyles’ favorite teams and organizations. Old carpet covered the floor, and the warmth along with the smell I can’t describe gave the room a relaxing and comforting feeling. Mr. Pyles told the class that we would be reading and reviewing a couple of anonymous students’ papers on the projector, as a way to offer some advice on common mistakes people may make and how to help fix them. 

About halfway through the class, I ended up recognizing that he had put mine up on the screen. I thought to myself, “Okay, this shouldn't be too bad. Someone will just read it out and give a couple of ideas to help make it better”. 

However, Mr. Pyles must’ve forgotten whose paper it was and said “Marco, could you read these two paragraphs out to the class and tell me what’s wrong with them?” 

At this point, my heart dropped and I began to panic a little bit internally. This was both in part because I had to critique my own work, and also because I had been called to read on the spot. I was aware that no one knew that it was my paper that I was reading but I still had this nagging feeling that everyone was silently judging me and my paper. Almost like that feeling you get when you fall in public and you feel like that’s all everyone is thinking about as if that’s what they are going to think of each and every time they see you. When it came to pointing out what was wrong with my paper and how the anonymous writer (myself) could improve upon it, I was at a loss for words. To me, those two paragraphs were just good already, and I was honestly lost as to how I could improve them. To just get it over with, I made some general statements about grammar, and punctuation, and perhaps added a few complex words to polish it up. “Phew, this torment is finally over. He’ll probably just agree with me and we can all move on” is what I thought to myself. And wrong I was. 

Mr. Pyles decided to add to what I said and ended completely destroying those two paragraphs in front of the class. From the grammar to what I had thought were some great transitional sentences, he picked my paper apart the same way a vulture would pick apart its prey. He took jabs at the way I tried incorporating quotes into my paragraphs, and crossed out sentence after sentence, leaving nothing but a few sentences that he deemed worthy enough to keep. I was trying to contain my embarrassment and I think I might’ve gotten as red as a tomato because I glanced over at my friend and I instantly knew that he had deduced that the paper was mine. I refused to look around the room after that, but to me, it seemed like I could almost feel the eyes of my classmates staring at me as if they too were trying to pick me apart. I could feel my hands begin to shake a little as I tried to remain still and calm to not give off any evidence that I was in distress at the time. At last, he finished the torture with a compliment about the actual evidence I had researched and the one quote that I had incorporated pretty well. My method of writing papers had been undone in the span of a gruesome 10 minutes. 

This was a deeply humbling experience for me, as I could no longer sort of bs my way through writing assignments and had my work criticized so heavily for the first time. And despite my lack of interest in writing at the time, I viewed this as a sort of challenge that I needed to overcome. I’ve always been pushed by those around me to strive for above and beyond, so I was determined to redeem myself. With the guidance of Mr. Pyles for the following week and a half, I’d say my writing improved significantly. With much of the advice he gave me, I was able to better understand and incorporate quotes into my writing to give the paper a good flow, but also be effective in presenting the information to be convincing to the reader. I expanded my limited vocabulary in my own time to add a more sophisticated feel to my writing and have a different array of words available to me to pick and choose from when writing. 

A couple of days later, I was laying in bed scrolling through YouTube when I got a notification from Canvas about the Witch Hunt Editorial assignment being graded. A couple seconds later, the group chat with my friends began to explode. They were all discussing their grades on the essay, expressing either joy or immense disappointment about the grade they had received. I began to tense up and could feel myself get more and more nervous as I opened up Canvas and made my way to the grades tab of my English class. My hand shook as I opened the assignment, turning my face away from the screen to avoid seeing the score that I had received. I finally decided to reveal the grade to myself, and a great feeling of relief washed over me as I saw the 94/100 on my screen. I laid back across my bed and stared at my ceiling with a smile across my face, proud of myself for what I had accomplished. 

Even today, I still try to look back on all of the advice he had given me, from how to incorporate transitional statements into my paragraphs, to introducing citations in a way that doesn’t create awkwardness in the flow of the content of a paper. I think that my experience in that small classroom changed my outlook on writing quite a lot. In fact, I sometimes even look forward to it and have encountered a new problem: I often write way too much and struggle to cut down the word count to meet the assignment requirements. And although I feel this was the turning point in my writing experiences, I still believe that I can further improve upon those skills and develop a deeper understanding and appreciation for writing.