New TO college?

Question

hiall, i have a ques here goes... well im new to college and of course i know the transition from highschool varies from easy to hard. My problem is that i was an a-b student in highschool, and now that im in college i do fairly well on my exams its just the writing of the essays that kills me. i was always called a good writer. have my skills gone out the window? the questions are very diffrent than what im used to answering in highschool. does anyone have any pointers on how to write good essays during exams? or how can i develope my critical thinking skills? thankyou

also. i wanted to know.. does taking college english help you do better academically?

Answer 1

A couple of things here. First there is nothing unusual about doing poorly in your first year or two of college in an area you were good at in high school; in fact that is pretty ordinary.
Now it is not clear from your question if you are asking about essay writing assignments, essay questions on exams or both. For the former you should avail yourself of resources at your college to help with writing. Most universities have an undergraduate writing center to assist in developing essay writing skills or there are workshops put on from time to time for that purpose. Sign up, drop in. Also, it should be part of your professors' or TAs' job to help students with their essays. Don't be shy; go see them. Come prepared with at least an outline, thesis, first paragraph if not a full draft.
For essay questions on exams, make sure you do not talk about what you know about; talk about what the question asks for. In other words do not spend an excessive amount of time on one point just because you happen to remember a lot about it. Usually a little bit about a large number of topics relevant to the question is better than a lot about one or two points. Next, invest five minutes to organize an answer. Write down quickly in point form all the topics you think you are going to want to talk about and then organize them in groups and in order. Often a professor will look at that, like it, check to see you have in fact done that and give you a good mark. It saves us time and shows us most of what we want.
Good luck.