Most of the kids who write really well due to natural talent don't ever make drafts, amirite?

I can pump out a six page paper the night before it's due in two hours and get an A. I haven't actually written a 'draft' in years, unless you count drafts for plays and stories. I think you mean essays, though. To make up for that intense ego stroke, let it also be known that I struggle with basic mathematical concepts. You gain some, you lose some.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

I am the same. For my college English class, we have three main essays. We have to submit a rough draft, which I do a couple of hours before it is due(it's only 3-4 pages requirement), and then I do the revised draft about half an hour before it is due because there is little variation. I also am not very good at math though. Or science. Or history.... Yeah, writing is pretty much it.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Oh, I love history, but math and science... yeah, not happening. I dropped them both because they're not a requirement for senior year and signed up for just English, history, and language courses. Today, I got my report card for the first quarter; best grades I've had my entire high school career. HMM. I WONDER WHY.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

I find history boring. Except for my history class my junior year in high school. My teacher was all into conspiracy theories and made the class fun. But I still wasn't good at it. English has always been my best subject. My college class makes my wonder how those people even graduated high school though.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

I often forget how stupid people are. I remember in my Honors English class last year I was talking to my teacher about a project I was working on and mentioned I question I wanted to ask the class about the protagonist, and he told me that I should probably just say 'main character' because they wouldn't know what a protagonist is. This was an Honors level English class for eleventh-graders, and the saddest thing was that he was right.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Are you kidding? That is ridiculous. Protagonist is one of the basic words you need to know for an English class like that. We proofread each other's rough drafts and there were a few people who made me want to curl up in the fetal position and cry. It wasn't just one or two mistakes here and there. There were tons of spelling and grammatical errors, run on sentences, everything. It's like hey, see that pretty little red squiggly line? Yeah, that means you are stupid and don't know how to spell worth a crap.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

I knew what a protagonist was in the 3rd grade.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Exactly. It's not a difficult concept.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

When you mentioned the little red squiggly line it reminded me of something. Yesterday we (9th graders) were writing abstracts in physics class using the laptops. This girl sitting next to me misspelled the word "ball" as "boll." At first I thought it was a typo but as I continue to edit her work, she spells it as "boll" as least 6 times. ono

by Anonymous 12 years ago

People like her make me lose faith in humanity.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

AH. I remember a week or so ago, I was giving a presentation in English, and I brought up the "I came, I saw, I conquered" quote, and this girl in my class was like "WHOA, Thats from Jersey Shore!" I momentarily forgot my manners and clicked my tongue, shifted my weight to one foot, crossed my arms and said "uuuh...No. How 'bout Caesar?" and then rolled my eyes. This girl is in AP Language.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

... Oh my god. ono

That's disgusting.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Lucky. For some insane reason the State if Missouri decided that kids needed math all four years of high school. My mom only took one math class freshman year and she's an accountant. Missouri logic never fails to amuse me.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

I think you definitely need math more than one year, but not all 4.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

I only write drafts to satisfy my teachers. And the draft is almost ALWAYS the exact same as the actual paper I turn in, plus or minus a few words.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

You pulled the words right out of my mouth.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Do you look at it this way? When you write a paper, you might as well write it well the first time and not have to basically re-do it. But with that, it can take me several minutes to come up with the right sentence, while other people just zoom through the whole draft like crazy people and then rewrite the whole thing later.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

That's exactly it! I spend time doing it right the first time, and then just add a few tiny tweaks later. It's awful when teachers ask for a rough draft of a new paper the following day, wishing for you to essentially spit out a bunch of information in a manner like, "Suleiman the Lawgiver lived in the Ottoman Empire. Suleiman the Lawgiver was born in ----. He died in ----. ...That's what I learned about Suleiman the Lawgiver." I'd rather take it step by step, but do it right from the beginning.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Teachers never understand that people write differently. Drafting should take more than just a day or two. Sometimes I'll just sit in my English class looking around for 10 minutes at a time before I ever write down anything. If I ever have a rough draft assignment due in a hurry, the sentences make no sense and I have no general direction. It's just crap to get the teacher off my back.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

As you stated, sitting in my English classing looking around not knowing what to write is a very common occurrence. Another thing is when we have to do a '7 minute write', or something like that, and I take 3 of the minutes trying to think of a good first sentence before realizing I just have to go.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

I always write drafts afterwards, just dumbing down a few words.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

It's nice to see people enthusiastically agreeing rather than arguing

by Anonymous 12 years ago

That's a splendid idea! I would use that, but we always need to turn in our drafts before our finals.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Same here. Peer editing never really was helpful for me, since my peers rarely found mistakes in my writing.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Agreed. Unless of course it's that I haven't finished yet, having written the beginning well.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

I never write drafts. All I do is type a couple of sentences with the main ideas, type the rest of my paper (spellchecking as I go) and I'm done in about 1-2 hours. I'm not much good at math, though.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

I'm oddly outnumbered here. Not to be cocky, but I do think I'm one of the best writers in my grade, at least in the top 5, but I draft all the time. I'm huge on revising. I rarely make grammar mistakes, but I believe that content can always be changed to be made better. I understand that a first draft could be good, good enough to get you an A, but I don't think a first draft is ever amazing.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

That wasn't supposed to be anon, btw, that was me.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Ah, very true. I always make drafts when i'm doing an essay that counts for half of my grade. Basically, i know that at least 85% of what ANYONE writes (no matter how "perfect" it may seem) can somehow be tweaked to make better. Unless i'm typing the assignment on the computer, i just go back and change it. I don't re-type it all. :P

by Anonymous 12 years ago

I'm not a drafter, but I do revise. It's more like I revise as I go. I make each sentence nice. I may revise a tiny bit at the end, just perhaps rearranging a few sentence, but that's about it.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

That technically is revising, but I mean changing things on a bigger scale. Like, this paragraph should be first, the last three lines don't fit in with the rest of the essay, these quotes aren't as effective as the others, etc.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

That's point. I don't revise on the level of drafts.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Ha, reminds me of last week. Had an english short story to write, wrote it in an hour or so (several pages) then turned it in and got +95%!

by Anonymous 12 years ago

When I first read this I thought you meant writing neatly, like handwriting, and I was confused. But I'm terrible at writing, so I don't know how to vote since I can't relate. I hate writing. I'm good with vocabulary and grammar though. I'm just not creative at all. But, I'm actually really good at math and science, so I guess I'm the complete opposite of pretty much everyone else who commented.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

Most people in general don't write drafts, regardless of how good they are at writing.

by Anonymous 12 years ago