Read my essay

[studyhard]

Would it be safe to say that having a clearly defined thesis, 3 organized paragraphs (or possibly 2 since I often can't finish 3 in 45 minutes) with no grammatical/spelling errors, and a brief conclusion would give me a passing grade, even if my content isn't especially good (assuming I stay on topic of course)?

I'd say yes. I took English Comp, not Freshman Comp, but the stuff I read beforehand stressed that they are looking more for an essay that hangs together well than one that is especially deep. The unity and coherency of the content is more important than how brilliant it is. In fact, I know I mentioned that you should think about how factual your comments are, but now that I think about it, I actually don't think they attach as much weight to the factualness of the comment as to its position in the logical flow. So don't stress too much over that. Yes, try to be factual, but even more than that, try to be logical and consistent.

Something else that may help you....I find when I'm stymied on something I'm writing, I pretend that I'm talking to a person. I don't worry about grammar or anything like that, I just think, "Okay, a person is sitting right here that wants to learn about this subject. What are some things I would say?" Then write that down on paper and THEN edit it. For whatever reason, that really helps free me from mental writer's block. If you try to think of the perfect way to word an idea before you've clearly thought out the idea itself, you'll probably implode. (At least, I do. ) If you can think of three things to say to a person, you can use those three things as your three points. Talk it out to yourself and imagine what you would say in a normal conversation.

And yeah, practice, practice, practice. I write articles all the time but I don't do well with a 45-minute deadline either. What I tried to do was apportion a certain amount of time per section. Say, 5 minutes for each paragraph and 20 minutes to go back and review. Always leave enough time for one final read-through--on my essay, I caught a place where I had started to change a sentence and then got sidetracked, so it didn't make any sense.

When I get a minute I'll try to come back and read your essay through again.

Keep up the good work!