The Past and the Future

                Throughout high school, Courtney was exposed to plenty of literary analysis. For example, during junior year she wrote an in-class essay every week; she looked at poetry, short stories, even articles. One would think this experience would make her an expert, but sadly, she still has a lot to learn.

Courtney has both strengths and weaknesses as an academic writer. Some of her strengths are

·         organization and structure of the paper

·         strong diction

Some of her weaknesses include

·         honing in on the most important aspects of the piece

·         lack of confidence in her creativity

Courtney knows how to tell a teacher what they expect to hear. She likes being right—as human beings do—so she learned early on how to repeat back any themes, genres, or figurative language that the teacher has explained in class, of course with solid diction and in logical paragraphs. She does this very well, in fact. But as she grew older, teachers began expecting her to “think on her own” and “express creative ideas.” However, she recognized that when a teacher says that “there is no wrong answer,” they really mean that “there is more than one right answer.” There are clearly incorrect analyses. And as a perfectionist, she is often afraid to meander off the well-used paths of past analyses and come up with something “new” or “creative” in case it is incorrect or even insignificant. She did learn how to express her own ideas with time and practice during her later high school years, though that seems insufficient for college-level formal analysis.

 Even for this assignment, Courtney feels inadequate. She hasn’t written literary analysis since last year, and even then it felt brief. She feels like she won’t be completely sure what skills she’s retained and lost until she begins the writing process. Will it be like riding a bicycle? Will she miss the mark completely? That option wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t affect her grades. But either way, this will be an important literary experience.