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How I survived CW I

by Seiken OkadaUMass Lowell

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This semester in college writing 1 I have accomplished survival. I am no stranger to close calls, being one step away from detention, etc but of course none ofthat mattered in high school. Only this time around if I failed I would not be able to graduate in 3 years like I planned so it was a big deal. It was not a matter of intellect, let me tell you. I've done AP English Language and Composition and AP Literature in my time. Though admittedly I did not fare well in the tests,my class grades averaged B. And the essays then were much more vigorous-we hadlike 4 projects on Hamlet alone. Therefore I can only assume the professor was trolling me when he said I was in danger of failing the first day of class. And he made sure to follow up on his threat for each subsequent essay.One day after a particularly disheartening conference with the prejudiced professor (wow a teacher that talks to you!) I asked myself what would Bob do? Bob andI took AP classes together, and although he did not know how spelling worked hedid better than me in english. I asked him his secret to success. you gotta writ

e what they wanna hear. You can bs the whole thing and they just eat it up, saidBob smugly. This guy is evil, was my first thought. But now I'm faced with a teacher that was bent on slapping me with a giant F to the face no matter what-I hadno other choice. I decided to kiss up with dignity. A sarcastic sycophant.I would like to thank my professor Mr. W; without his constant threats this essay could not have been possible and would've been generic.The second essay he mademe fail, I went to a tutor to ask if it was indeed lack of skill that brought this upon me. We had fun bashing on the professor, but other than that he could only echo words from the guidelines. Which I knew by heart. The problem this time,according to the professor, was I missed the point of the essay. Like what does that even mean. The only thing he wrote on the draft was to add more content.I added half a page. His main gripe seemed to be he could not accept innocence as being a positive aspect of character. How stubborn can someone be. Is differen

ce in opinion grounds to ruin a student's career? Next time, I would be as bland as possible. Maybe courage or kindness.Some kind of change took over the professor by the next essay. Although it was necessary he fail me he gave me an extended deadline to redo it. I think he was wary of the review I was prepared to write on the teacher assessment. Practicallyevery day the following week I emailed him a slightly different version from the last and received vague instructions in return. The final product was so terribly unoriginal and boring I was ashamed to put my name on it. It was a nice gesture by him though, because he pretty much wrote it for me. Which brings me to another strategy for survival: make someone else write it for you. Not like ghostwriter business. I mean taking ideas from someone else. More or less like plagiarism.The latest essay was about love. You just needed to write what it meant to you,

basically. Taking a random book concerning romance from the shelf of the libraryand combining it with a leaf out of Bob's book, I managed to type two pages of nonsense. And he dug it. This was the first essay I passed this semester and I wasquite baffled. But it was not so puzzling on second thought. The first few essays I was still in the habit of being too unique but this time the topic was loveand there was no way to write something new about that. In the redone essay I made the same mistake and forgot to make it boring. By this point I knew what theprofessor expected. He had a hundred odd students to grade and it would be easier for him if they all wrote about the same things. To be sure I included a lot of bs to make the content exciting. This hel

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ped me become a creative writer but with the bonus of being capable of writing cliche crap. I plan to use this technique for the final as well. Between you andme, I have not had great success in job interviews of late but I can see why now. It was because I was not playing the toady to full effect. College writing 1 has been a grueling, frustrating experience but totally worth. 10/10 would do again. For some others, it may be other things they've learned. For example: punctuation, literary strategies, and how to upload essays but me, I already knew how todo these things from AP.