My life in English   Neal Richards II ERH-101 9/17/15 Help received: tutor English was never my favorite subject especially writing an essay. I am a slow writer with a small vocabulary and can’t spell to save my life.  My struggles made my 10^th grade English class, which was mainly writing a paper per class, a living nightmare (for some reason, I was in the upper level class for that grade which made it harder) but it also showed me how fun writing could be when I’m writing about a poem or short story. I was always in the slower level English classes up till my 8^th grade year.  While going in to my 8 grade year, my 7^th grade English teacher put me in the honor English class,  not the regular English class. I wanted to drop the honor class but my mom told me I should stay and at least try. Since it was middle school honor’s English, we did the a little bit more than the regular classes. I was slower in the writing assignments than the other students but the assignments were not hard. Since I thought 8^th grade English was easy, I decided to continue honor’s English in 9^th grade. In 9^th grade, I realized the differences in levels in both me and my class mates and also middle school English and high school English. I had to do more assignments but it was mainly reading and decision with little writing. Despite getting my first F in the first half of my second semester, I still took honor’s 10^th grade English not knowing that I would be writing a lot of papers. I remembered how my 10^th grade English teacher, MR Raymond, would always have a short essay or an article the class would have to read and analyze by the end of next class.  When reading, I could read slowly which would make it easy to comprehend but be behind everyone else who was in that class or read fast which kelp me up with my classmates but not comprehend a word in the essay or short story. I would choose one but always fell stupid when I couldn’t comprehend what everyone in that class though was easy or be half way done when everyone else is finish.  The worst part was the writing not the essay for me. We would write so many just papers to get ready for the SOL, stander of learning, which is a state wide test of stander that every school is focus on. The English 10 SOL was focus on reading about a piece or an article and then having to analyze it in a full essay. As my class started to analyze paper more and more, I started to hate writing even more. I remember writing about an essay about uniforms in public school. The student who wrote the essay was complaining about how the school board wanted the students of one high school to wear uniform. He also talked about the many flaws there was in the uniform system. I REALY didn‘t care about why or why not kids should have uniform in public school so it was hard of me to write an essay. When I started writing, I would write 1 to 2 sentence then let my ADD kick in because I did not find it interesting. It took me the whole class period to force myself to write one paragraph when all of my classmate, which most found the essay very interested, finest with a hot argument. I had to take the essay home for homework but even there, it took me 4hr to write two more paragraph which I put little effort in. when I turned the essay in the next day willing to accept any grade instead M.R Raymond made redo the essay.  I was a little mad that I had to redo the essay took me 6 hour to do. Having to repeat the same process, 1 to 2 sentence then let my ADD kick in, I retuned the paper with little editing the next class day just to be done with it and get a F. It was the same story, trying to side by with D’s and C’ for the whole first semester until the SOL. That when our English teacher, Mr. Raymond, said that we were done with the boring part that the state forces us to do. I thought that the writing assignments would be more analyze but I was amazed to see that we get to make short story. I remember a story that I made that I had fun with. The story was about a soldier how was fighting in this long war. He goes back to his home town to only see that it nuked because of the war. He look around the town remembering his life in the town with only give him sadness and ask what was he fighting for. He hears a working radio that only talked about how his country won the war but he think that it doesn’t feel like he won the war. It was a fun piece I made up on the stop in class. I knew I got inspiration from some were but forget (since this happen three years ago).  Mr Raymond loved it and wanted to put it in the school magazine because he loved the twist about the country winning the war.   10th grade was also where I learn that it was easier for me to write poem and short story than analyzing and summary writing. By analyzing a lot of essays made me hate writing to the point that I didn’t care about my grades. Writing short story didn’t only help me in liking writing a little bit more but also helped my grade a little. It change my view on writing from a “how do I English” to a “I can somewhat English”. It is not like my class turn me in to an English lover but it helped me realize that English is not that hard of a subject and I should put 100% in my paper.