Reflective Essay: The Freshman Nightmare

It was a cloudy morning, in the tiny town of Pen Argyl, when I walked up the long steps toward my first year of high school English. With sweaty palms and shaky knees, I neared the large wooden door. Gripping my schedule tightly in my fist, I found the classroom and searched for my seat. To say that I was nervous was an understatement. I had heard about the teacher from her previous students, and their comments did not alleviate any of my fears. She held her title as ‘The Freshman Nightmare’ due to her hypocritical attitude and the hatred she carried for us. I had previously talked to some of her past students and they warned me about her harsh grading system. I had even heard horror stories of her calling out students in front of the entire class! I wasn’t looking forward to the coming year. Little did I know at the time, she was going to make my life just as miserable, maybe even worse. To the majority of her other students, they accepted that they weren’t skilled writers and they moved on, but not me. No, …show more content…
After her explaining the topic, she went over with the entire class that we needed to receive a passing grade for the paper, to pass the class. I had never written a formal research paper before and I wasn’t thrilled that she would be judging my first attempt at writing one. The pressure to write something that she would approve of and prove to myself that I was in fact a decent writer after all, was suffocating. The entire writing process turned out to be awful. She managed to criticize everything that I did, there wasn’t an error that she could not find. The entire course was a disaster and incredibly discouraging. To make matters worse, the week before the due date, she informed me of her distaste with the direction of my paper and my writing in general. I was a nervous wreck. It was too late to start my paper over, therefore, I did the best I could to make it