Journal #35 - Comparing My Writing

Today the journal is based around how my writing has changed since the beginning of the year. Seeing as though it was half a year ago that I wrote the five hundred word essay on the Declaration of Independence, one could imagine that I have changed a great deal in how my literary styles are arranged. Looking at the essay now,  I see that I obviously could not fathom the concept of a five paragraph essay. Seeing as though I wrote roughly a million of them over the summer for AP United States History, you would think I would understand that. My essay from before had exactly three paragraphs and, while they were of decent length and provided a lot of information, that would just not cut it. Nowadays, my essays all contain at least five paragraphs, which is very helpful for the future. Now that I have read through the essay, I am appalled at my foolishness. What was I thinking? I put one quote in the essay. One. There was not even a second citation. I just flat out quoted the Declaration at one point and talked around it. Now I looked over at the essay I wrote last night on Walt Whitman and his search for self - I have a nice, decently lengthed essay with five paragraphs and six citations, unless I miscounted. Around each quote or reference is a detailed explanation as to why it is important to my writing. That is obviously something that I did not understand five months ago. My writing has changed a lot since the beginning of the school year. I can now elaborate my thoughts in a more detailed fashion, accurately portraying my ideas among the facts I gathered from whatever we were analyzing and the literary criticisms online. Thankfully, my writing in general - the actual sound of my sentences - has improved a lot more. Instead of sounding like a simple high school student, I am starting to sound like more of an advanced placement or honors student. For these reasons and the ones above, I have improved a lot since the beginning of the year.