I'm not sure what's wrong with this. It's about 200 characters over the permitted length, so I need to cut it short, but it feels like there's something missing. I like writing narrative, so the beginning paragraphs appeal to me and I would like to keep them to make it sound more personal. Other than this, I'm not sure if I'm properly explaining how the book has affected me.
Thanks in advance for the feedback.
I ran my fingers over the dusty covers of the books piled on my bedside table. Jane Eyre. Pride and Prejudice. Twilight. With a remorseful sigh, I wiped the dust from my finger onto my jeans. They would have to wait. There was another book that required and retained my attention.
The cover was glossy and black. The image of an obscure organism took center-stage. Two words had strategically been placed above the image. Threatening words that foreshadowed endless hours of study and sleepless nights, and sent a shudder down my vertebrae: "AP Biology".
Holding the AP Bio book, I felt I had the key to open my mind to the secrets of life that humankind had so far been able to unravel. I was anxious to discover what had been withheld from me in my 10th grade Biology course.
Succeeding in AP Bio required a lot of reading. I was motivated to excel because I wanted to learn, but I lacked the commitment and study skills that pushed me to read each night. My solution: read at school.
My grades were good, but I realized that my "solution" to my inability to focus on studying at home was not the best course of action in the long run. I decided to improve my study skills by concentrating on AP Bio for at least an hour per night. This resulted in me constantly falling asleep on top of the textbook, but having read and understood the material for class.
The difficult task of reading over 1000 pages in my AP Bio book has taught me to remain persistent in my ambitious pursuit for knowledge, and to retain my curious nature. It proved that commitment leads to the deserved rewards, and that short cuts are not always the best option to achieve successful results.
first it would be better if you wrote Biology instead of Bio ( doesn't take up any extra words and sounds formanl )
secondly..
I felt I had the key to open my mind to the secrets of life that humankind had so far been able to unravel
i believe this sentence is unnecessary as in the next sentence you basically say the same, but just with an added reference to the tenth grade.
and thirdly , if you can't find words to cut from anywhere else i suggest you make your narrative a bit shorter
Good Luck1
This essay doesn't portray the best picture of you. Who reads a thousand-paged Biology book? You know you can get a 5 and retain about the same amount of knowledge if you read Barron's 150-200 (?) page book. I was so excited to read your essay because you had such a good hook going in the first paragraph and then the rest of the essay just fell short. Possibly change your topic or have a different thesis (point/focus/whatever) in this essay about how your quest for learning led to you reading your Biology book basically day in and day out ("My solution: read at school")
Keep in mind how you want your college readers to see you.
Yeah, I agree with Vicki. You're hook is great but your conclusion is very weak and lacks much needed nuance. You should spend less time talking about how much you didn't want to read your AP Biology book and more about how the book actually affected you (answering the prompt). Also, it could really be more personal instead of so general.
I was indolent, and lacked the motivation to commit to the long study hours. I spent half an hour skimming chapters, assuming I would be prepared for class, when I should have been focusing on in-depth reading.
- If you legnthen your conclusion for word count. You could take this out, or shorten it. I can see you're being honest but this kind of makes you sound bad.
Overall, I think there is a good idea and story behind the essay, but it it longing to get out. The begining is farley strong, but the conclusion is slightly weak...I would consider including how the book really affected you and what you gained from reading it..instead of lingering on the topic of how you did not want to read it...
