How to Overcome Difficulties in Life

Over the years, people encounter many difficulties in their day-to-day activities. Whether it be big or small, we should strive to overcome those difficulties. In my previous English class, it was required to write an essay based on a passage and prompt provided by the state department. The materials provided could be of any genre and at any difficulty level they desired it to be. Writing on certain topics—like science or history—has always been very challenging to me, and based on previous state tests, informative science articles make up the majority of the passages chosen for the test. Writing an essay for the state test was a difficulty I overcame by: reading the material thoroughly, strengthening my vocabulary, completing practice essays, advancing my writing conventions, and skillfully organizing the essay.

Reading the materials meticulously was an important factor in writing a well-written essay. The provided passage and the prompt helped to give me clear instructions as to what the essay would be about; whilst planning for the essay, I read the prompt first, and then I proceeded to read the passage. I paid close attention to key points that were mentioned in the prompt; the key points of the prompt helped me to construct a well-written essay. I used these comprehension skills to make certain that a tiny—but important—detail was not looked over.

Throughout the year, I strengthened my vocabulary by taking vocabulary tests weekly on unknown words. The words that I learned helped to portray a wider variety of obtained knowledge in the essay. Learning and applying words of a higher vocabulary helped to heighten my score on the overall test; lassitude, laconic, adduce and mordacious are a small portion of the many vocabulary words that I learned last year. The vocabulary words I learned helped me to answer vocabulary questions and decipher unknown words in the passages on the multiple-choice section of the state test, as well. Moreover, a strong vocabulary helped me to express a higher sense of intelligence in the essay.

Completing practice essays helped to provide an idea of what the state test would have looked like. Multiple passages of various genres were presented in the aforementioned practice essays; writing on many different topics helped to prepare me for numerous types of essays. The practice essays helped me to become an all-around better writer for the future. I strived to complete practice essays that were focused towards the topics I struggled writing about—like science or history.

While being exposed to the many types of essays I could write, I also strengthened my writing conventions by viewing many organized example essays. I learned how to use punctuation—like commas, colons, semicolons, dashes, and hyphens—in a more advanced way. I strengthened my skills on the difference in homophones—like to and too—and how to use them correctly. While doing these things, it helped to strengthen my spelling on commonly misspelled words like a lot, government, and definite. The writing conventions that were skillfully strengthened helped me to write a more advanced essay than others.

Organizing an essay correctly was advantageous in writing a successful essay. Before my previous English class, I organized essays unsystematically. Every time an essay was written, it was never in the same order. Practicing for the state test taught me how to organize an essay efficiently. I skillfully organized the essay on the state test by: starting the introduction with a hook, placing the thesis statement at the end of the introduction, starting every body paragraph with a top sentence that was derived from the thesis statement followed by details supporting the topic, and putting a paraphrased version of the thesis statement at the beginning of the conclusion. Organizing the essay in this way raised the skill-level of the essay.

Reading the material thoroughly, strengthening my vocabulary, completing practice essays, advancing my writing conventions, and skillfully organizing the essay were methods that I executed to overcome the difficulty of writing an essay for the state test. Because I executed those skills proficiently, the essay scored at a high level; although, there is always room for improvement. Now, I can write an essay on almost any topic with little to no difficulty. Throughout the process of overpowering this difficulty, I have learned new skills that will not only help me in future English classes, but it will help me develop as a writer for the future. Striving to overcome that difficulty showed me that—with countless hours of practice and determination—I can overcome any difficulty that is on my road to success.

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