The Conceit Bug

The Conceit Bug

Reflexive Essay

The first time I sat down to write a paper for this class, I was excited. I love to write. I fluffed the pillow with the floral print and placed it perfectly with the other two king-size pillows. There rested, like three pillars, my pillows at the head of my bed leaning on the wall. I grabbed my laptop, a bottle of water, a box of Junior Mints, my cell phone, and the writing assignment instructions, and then climbed onto my pillow-topped California King sized bed. The comforter was inviting, nice and smooth – 400-count cotton. I wriggled my body to rest against the pillar of pillows, placed the water bottle on the nightstand, turned on my laptop, and plopped a few Junior Mints into my mouth. As Windows booted on my laptop, I mindlessly ate a few more Junior Mints as I read over my assignment.

My assignment seemed easy enough: write about how literacy and reading affected my feelings when I was growing up and how they shaped my views on those topics today. Piece of cake, I thought. As I opened up a new Microsoft Word 2007 document, my fingers began flying on the keys, clickety-clack. I chuckled to myself as I typed about when I actually checked out over thirty books from the library in one shot. I gulped a swig from my water bottle. Wiping any escapee water droplets off my mouth with the back of my hand, I typed more. After a while, I yawned, got up and brushed my teeth. It was late and I could finish it later.

Later came that next night. After putting my kiddos to bed, I once again grabbed the usual (water, candy, phone, laptop) and wrote more until I felt like I was done. I proofread it and felt confident in my story. So I printed it off and committed myself to take it to the Writing Center the very next day.

The next afternoon, I strode into the Writing Center. The room smelled of electrical wires and I could feel the heat that comes from many computers being on in a small place. I met with a writing assistant with assurance that she would want to crown me as the best writer ever to set foot in the Writing Center, placing my picture on the wall for all to see. Ok, I really didn’t feel that way, but I felt fairly certain that she would shower me with compliments and not find anything wrong. I had an A++ paper and was sure she would recognize that.

She had me read the paper aloud. Cool, I thought, I was going to get to hear myself reading my spectacular paper and others in the area would hear my greatness too. I am never really this cocky, but for some reason, the conceit bug had bit me and the symptoms were raring their ugly heads.

Part way through reading my own paper, I caught a mistake, a typo.

“Whoops,” I blushed and penciled in the correction.

The writing assistant smiled and assured me, “Don’t worry, it happens to everyone. That is why we have them read their papers out loud.”

She made perfect sense, yet the conceit bug bite’s venom was now flowing through my veins and all I heard coming from her mouth were odd variations of talking down to me, being patronizing. Didn’t she know that I was a great writer? That I simply typed too fast and made an error, an error that the stupid grammar checker didn’t notice?

I cleared my throat and read some more aloud, this time not as loud as before. Again, I came across something that needed fixing, although this time she found it. I felt my heart sink slowly into my stomach. I promised myself to never go into the Writing Center for help ever again. I didn’t want to read any more of paper. However, I painstakingly continued. As I read more, I got to a funny part and the writing assistant chuckled.

My spirits soared as I read more and got some laughs. But all good things come to an end. When I finished, I looked expectantly at her.

“That was great, Celeste,” she began. “However, let’s go over a few things you need fix.”

I literally felt like a balloon that is blown up, released in the air and then let go to frantically fly and zoom all over the room where it finally lands in some obscure location, all stretched out and sad looking. My mouth went dry. Had I hear her correctly? She went on to show me all the many things I could work on.

As she so kindly pointed out my errors, I felt like I was being dragged across hot coals. Her words stung. For some reason though, it was then that something inside me snapped. Not a bad kind of snapping like a disgruntled postal worker, but the good kind of snapping, much like an epiphany. The clouds parted and her words made their way into my mind: she was showing me how to turn my paper into an academic paper.

As soon as I realized this, I did a mental hand smack on my forehead. The whole semester before this class, I was in a creative writing class. Plus I have spent most of my life writing creative non-fiction and fiction pieces, as well as poetry. For some reason, things are different when writing a creative paper versus an academic paper. I don’t know how I never made that connection before – probably the conceit bug’s venom attacks that part of the brain.

Ever since that moment, I have been gobbling up any academic writing tips I can get. Every paper I wrote for this class I marched into the Writing Center prepared to be attacked and glad for their brutal honesty. I think everyone, no matter how good a writer they are, would benefit from the Writing Center.

It wasn’t just the writing center assistances that helped. The people in my English 1000 class were very good at giving me ideas and suggestions. I almost became eager to hear people’s criticism on my papers. I suppose the conceit bug bite’s antidote was constructive criticism. That, and letting myself be open to suggestions.

A couple other things that really helped me were the comments written on my rough drafts and the one-on-one evaluations. Especially when it came to the many times “abrupt shift” was written on my papers. It almost became the bane of my existence. In my head, it made perfect logical sense that when a paragraph ends and start another one, people should just know they are moving on to another subject. Can’t people just read my mind? Ok, so they can’t and it doesn’t work that way. This was something I struggled with all semester. I find that transitional sentences really do help make the paper flow nicely. I truly hope that this paper has minimal, if none, abrupt shifts.

Besides the dreaded abrupt shifts, I also struggled with the proposal essay. I had the most difficult time with that one. It had so much research involved. I don’t mind research, but there was so much to wade through, I felt like I was drowning in facts and statistics. Plus I had to leaf through all the solutions already proposed by other people to see if I liked one or had to come up with a whole new idea. One of the hardest parts though, was not being able to add humor to it. I generally try to add some sort of humor to the things I write. Even when I write about painful, personal experiences, I try to sprinkle in some humor. However, I couldn’t find any suitable place to add humor.

Even though I struggled with the proposal paper the most, I feel I benefited significantly in writing skills because of the struggle. That struggle, me trying to fix those dreaded abrupt shifts, allowing myself to be teachable to academic writing skills, and realizing I am not all-knowing, it has helped me tremendously. I still love writing and always will. I am grateful for the help of so many others to help me become a much better writer. Now instead of dreading English 2010, I am looking forward to it. I feel I have squashed the conceit bug for good.