take the time to get it right-amanda kopec

hey. Okay, so I don't really know how this whole thing works, but I promise I'll try my best. So I guess I don't have to tell you my entire life's story to explain my slogan thing, but there are some important parts along the way. When I was in grade school, (third or fourth grade) and I was reading and writing different things that the teacher assigned, I just thought that taking my time was the normal thing to do. The truth is, writing is very important to me and it's one of the best ways I can "express my creativity," (yeah, that was lame...) but when you like something that much you want to do it right... right? So I took a very long time to not only do the assignment, but to make sure that I had the best choice of words and that anything I wrote sounded just right. Although this was a very good way to get A's and impress my teachers, once I got older and I had tons more work to do, I found that my time to do everything the right way was growing shorter and shorter. By the time I got to junior high, there were so many papers to write and so many books to read that I knew I wouldn't be able to do the quality work that I knew I was capable of. I only wrote what was absolutely required of me, and I skipped all the transition sentences and big words. So that's pretty much how it went until sometime during freshmen year. Well, then freshman year came and all of a sudden my teachers wanted more of me again and my "just getting by" papers didn't reach the standards anymore, and that's where everything went downhill. I knew that if I wanted to succeed, I would have to clear even more time in my schedule, but unfortunately, the extra time kept me up until 2 or 3:00 a.m. on countless occasions. But I still never fell back into the ease of writing a solid paper and I still read very slowly (but that's because I still wanted to, even if it meant sleep deprivation). I guess what I'm really trying to say is that once I did have more essays and work to do I should have taken the time to get it right and learn how to write just as well and in half the time. So I've really kind of destroyed the rest of my 5-paragraph-essay-writing-life. It's a sad story--I know--but I do intend to somehow get back into trying my hardest and shortening the time it takes, but I really do believe that I've gotten a lot better. (and just in case you were wondering: YES-I stressed over this assignment for an hour, and YES-it did take me 2 hours to write this thing, but for me that's pretty darn amazing.)