"Here's your essay you have an hour to do. And I strongly suggest you do an outline for this one," says every teacher that I've ever had, and will ever have. Usually, I ignore this advice and set out to writing. I will, however, inevitably find myself lost in thought as I try to come up with an intelligent response while attempting to remember all my claims. I used to think pre-writing and outlining a bore, something that was below me. I had no time to make a good outline, but if I didn't make one, either my grade would be negatively affected, or my paper wouldn't be too great (look at the evidence people, some of my papers aren't very well-written).
To me, pre-writing is win-lose/hit or miss situation. If it weren't for my legendary apathy to school issues and writing about if Suzy should wear a uniform or not in public school, writing papers in general would be easier. But I'm getting off topic. Pre-writing can be a win scenario: I get all my thoughts down on time, I can come up with a clean thesis, and fit in quite a few details here and there. But the lose scenario can be devastating: I lose track of time, have jumbled, meaningless thoughts on paper and nowhere to go with it (which happens, I'll admit, a lot). Perhaps it's my attention span that needs the work, who knows.
By no means should teachers just stop making kids pre-write to all their essays. Pre-writing is absolutely effective to the average kid. For the kids like me, I would encourage what Aaron Hamburger said; make an outline after your paper. You can fill in missing information and even everything out once you have completed your essay.
Not a bad idea. I might just do that from now on.
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