I am Kirsten. They classify me as a freshman, whatever that means, and tell me that I am a member of the residential college, EDGE. What does this mean? It means I live with one of my professors and the members of my class and my other professors come to my dorm for class.
My thinking face.
Sounds cool right?
It totally is when your alarm clock didn’t go off and you have two minutes to get to class. Running down the stairs in my pajamas and making it to class on time feels like an epic win.
I am just about to finish my first year of college. Exciting right? Only somewhat when you know, like I do, that you have about eight more years to go. That doctorate seems a long way off right now, but baby steps are what will get me there. These baby steps don’t feel very baby at the time. They are long hard weeks of long hard essays.
How do you get through these torturous essays?
The answer is something I never would have come up with without the wonderful classroom and Learning Assistants (known as LA’s, they have a fancy name, but they are really just tutors) in my residential college. The classroom isn’t the most prestigious. To be honest it is a long rectangle that if you are sitting in the back you might think your professor is about a mile away.
The LAs seemed a little scary and unapproachable for the first few weeks, but after you watch your “superiors” wander to the kitchen in their pajamas a few times the new wears off.
SO back onto topic, how I learned to write an essay. I was sitting on top of one of the desks in the classroom, because I am a rebel. I was complaining, like I always seem to be doing, about how I had no idea where to start on my essay.
A guy who has now become a friend of mine stood up and walked to the white board. “To write an essay you begin with B.S., then you lie, then you B.S. some more. After that you support your B.S. and lies with some facts and finish it up with some more B.S. And you get an A,” As he said this he wrote on the board, which I photographed.
Essays 101.
While this is not a good method for actually writing essays it was very humorous. This laughable concept about lying got me writing. This is how I found the true way to write an essay, actually sit down and put words onto the paper, even if they are terrible lies. Because your sloppy words can be edited by your LAs, but an empty page cannot.
Without this humor and help I am not sure if I would have ever started that essay. I have to say that I love all the help and humor that comes from living in EDGE and using the classroom to study. Bouncing ideas off of others is, in my opinion, the best way to keep good insight and good grades.
First!