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Wowzah! It's The Two Short Essays Assignment!

Wowzah! It's The Two Short Essays Assignment! 

Essay 1

Prewriting:

    He sits at his desk, his eyes glued to the screen. Just a few chapters, that's all he needs to read, but as he reads he finds his mind wandering... wandering... wanderi- he snaps back to the page! where was he, did he already read that sentence? that paragraph? that page? or did his eyes simply glaze over it? who knows, certainly not him.

    Not sure how I could improve my approach to reading assignments. If I try to take breaks I just end up wasting too much time. Maybe I should read it in a window with no other tabs open, to get rid of the temptation? That's all I can think of, short of getting a Ritalin prescription.

Questions:

    1: He learns that by slowly and repetitively reading, he can pick apart and discern the individual pieces of writing that add up to create a good story, which he can then use to write better, himself.

    2: I think being the slowest reader in this context is not quite literal but close to it. Being a literally slow reader would suggest that the individual letters are being read at a slow pace. Whereas here, the reading of the individual words is normal, but the time spent on each sentence, paragraph, or chapter is extended greatly by the inspection of the text.

Essay 2

Prewriting:

    He sits at his desk in an identical manner to the way he previously sat when tasked with a reading assignment. The only observable difference is that now, instead of being bored stiff, he is excited! Finally, he has the chance to be comedic! To make things interesting! Though, he can't think of an entertaining way to describe what he's currently writing, which happens to be this very assignment. A recursive rabbit-hole of a 3rd person narrator describing a man writing the same 3rd person narrator to describe the same man writing the same 3rd person narrator to describe the same man writing the-... He's gotten off-track. As he comes back from the pit of endless prose, he grapples with the desire to be creative versus the knowledge that he -for the sake of the assignment- should probably reel it in a bit.

    My takeaway from writing this is that maybe I shouldn't try to be funny in assignments, and just stick to a more serious tone. Even if I do find that thought disappointing.

Two ideas from the short essay I found important:

    1: The idea of making the writing fun/interesting. I like to think I already do that, but I feel affirmed reading it from an official essay. So I'll keep doing it!

    2: The source-heavy trick. If I end up using it, it will probably cut down a lot on the time it takes for me to write an essay. Though, on the other hand, it has the same ominous feeling as a forbidden secret technique, like necromancy.

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