First assignment.

I got my first assignment back yesterday and was very pleasantly surprised. I say surprised because I really had no idea how I was going to do. It was the first college paper I had written in more than 7 years and I thought I might be a bit rusty at it.

The assignment was to write a critical paragraph on a short story we'd read in class. Before we got our papers back, the instructor wanted to go over some grammar rules and common mistakes that students had made. She wrote the 5 most common mistakes on the board and I thought to myself "Oh God, I don't even know what 3 of those mean." A comma splice?! What the hell is a comma splice? Or a pronoun antecedent? How about an ellipses? No clue! Gulp and double gulp.

As she went over the 5 things, I realized that I knew exactly what each one of those things was. I just never knew the names for them. Even better though, was that it also turns out that not only do I know what they are but I mostly know how to use them! Whoo hoo!

She handed our papers back and mine had very few marks or comments on the front. A couple of check marks, a 'nice' written above one of my observations (yay) and a little arrow telling me to indent the 2nd line of my bibliography. And that was it. I flipped the paper over to see her additional comments and they took up a full page. My eyes jumped to the mark at the bottom and it was good. Then I read her comments.

"The area for you to continue to develop is content... I really like your discussion; however, it needs further development...you might consider exploring this with a bit more depth."

But the kicker, the part that actually got me a little teary (yes, I really got a little teary) was her first sentence to me... "This is quite well done for a first paragraph. You write well and your ideas are cohesive and your examples good."

And then at the bottom of the page, in a breakdown on how she marked us, she wrote "Writing style - strong"

Writing style - strong! Yay! I blinked my watery eyes trying to keep the tears from actually falling and silently rejoiced. Writing style - strong. I had no idea I was going to react that way. I think I had been nervous that maybe I didn't have what it was going to take to make it as a dancer. (ok sorry, it's an old Three's Company line that I couldn't resist throwing in there. From the episode where Janet wants to be a dancer and her instructor tells her how great she is so he can sleep with her and then when she turns him down he tells her that she never had what it takes to make it as a dancer. For Janet, her passion was dancing and for me it's writing.) I was worried that maybe I had no natural ability to write and writing is so what I need to be doing. To get such positive feedback meant a lot to me.

My next assignment is an in-class critical essay. I am familiar with the short story we'll be writing on and I have a pretty good idea on the topic so I am going to write a practice essay this weekend to prepare myself. When on earth did I get so grown up and responsible??