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The word "essay" was one of my most feared words when I first attended college. It was truly my Achilles Heel. Although I did well in High School with long reports (sometimes 20 pages), I still had difficulty getting a handle on the essay, especially when it was part of a test. Well, I decided to take a deep breath and tackle the issue.

In my freshman year of college I was given a language arts diagnostic test and it was determined that I could "use a little help" with my writing. I did not like the idea one bit. I reluctantly agreed to take the essay-writing course in my first semester. It felt awkward that I even had such a need but I concluded that it was for the best. I said let me address this issue and address it thoroughly.

Every one of us has had and will continue to have issues like that in our lives. We know that it is our weak area. Those who are close to us may have alluded to it. We want to overcome that area, but the thought of facing it just takes the air out of us. We would rather put it on the "back-burner," indefinitely. Well, I'm glad that I put essay writing on the "front burner."

During the essay-writing course I realized that whenever I was asked to write an essay that what I would do is to throw all the thoughts that I had on my mind on paper without any real order. I would hope that somehow my reader (in most cases, my professor) would make sense of it, have mercy on me and then give me a decent grade. I realized that I was very far from the truth. On many occasions, I would attempt that method when answering essay questions and often I would score a 10 out of 20 or at best a 12 out of 20. I was often very discouraged by those scores.

Finally, I decided that I would do what it took to be a good essay writer. I asked my instructors "what was I doing wrong?" I took the feedback to heart and decided that I would approach my essays methodically and not just as something that I wanted to "pass through" or just get done. Essay writing reminded me of how I felt the first time (7th grade) I had a music teacher and she wanted to teach me the mechanics of music. She wanted to teach us music notes and various symbols! How absurd? I thought, music is just for fun and singing, not something to be studied. Well, I'm still getting over that. So, like music, essay writing had a method also and in that case I was determined to figure it out.

I realized that there were three key components of essay writing that would improve my use of the English language.

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