Is my essay good enough?

drakorising
Tue, 13 Nov 2012 20:47:48 +0000

(Comments are in chronological order( as in when I got to that section in the essay, I commented on it or how it doesn’t add up to a point you made earlier.)

First things first. Is your essay one super paragraph? If so, i’d find spots where your focus changes and make that into it’s own paragraph. Readers aren’t going to enjoy reading a super paragraph.

Second, your parallelism in the beginning should be shortened at the “I wanted to be a baseball…” into a list format. They will get that you are trying to use parallelism by then and it saves you words.

Your “I used to quit…” sentence would benefit from a transitional word like “As a result”.

You mis-used “where” in the sentence where you teachers called her. It’s were.

I would link you trying everything to your dad’s death because I was confused when you abruptly changed topics. I see that you started to put the pieces together later but having that transition would keep your readers reading.

By the time i’m reading your love of surfing, i’m in full-on confused mode. Is this essay about your dad’s death and the void that was filled by your step-dad or you never finding “your thing” until surfing? If it’s the latter, I would omit your dad’s death and just mention your step-father. If it’s the former, i’d probably go in-depth on creating a father-son connection through surfing.

Your concluding statements are a bit weak. That’s how we were taught to finish an essay early on in high school but you’re a senior. The readers will be expecting a satisfying ending to your story. I’d really reflect on what you want to write on and the perfect ending will just come flowing out.