My Essay Format In College

College is intimidating. Essays, lab reports, quizzes, and tests, among other assignments, creep their way into students’ lives and make many attending university want to cry—myself included. Although I am a Biology major, many of my classes require the ability to write well in a formal academic voice. I would like to think that I started my college career knowing how to write in a formal manner; however, that was not the case. Only after taking Honors English 100, taught by Professor Garland, do I have a better grasp of the English language and the tools to write successfully at a college level. One of the first realizations I had about my writing is that I often repeat the same word or phrase too many times. The second essay the class had …show more content…
In fact, I learned that most the time an essay with not follow that format in college. First, if the minimum requirement for pages is more than three, having only five paragraphs would make for five very long paragraphs that can get difficult to follow. I discovered that you can have more than one introductory paragraph if it would your essay better. For example, in the research-based essay on homelessness, I wrote seven paragraphs before the three paragraphs that proved my thesis statement (Fighting Homelessness in Hawaii). Those seven paragraphs were important because within them I explained the history of homelessness in America and in Hawaii, and I also included a paragraph on the opposing view (Fighting Homelessness in Hawaii). “Fighting Homelessness in Hawaii” is the essay I am most proud of writing; the many paragraphs in the beginning helped my arguments to shine later on in the essay. I learned that to have a more creative and successful paper, I need to be more flexible with the format. Every essay is different in terms of how much background is needed and where naysayer arguments are