My Life is a LIE!!! · 4:27am Apr 25th, 2013
Two blog posts in a week, what?!
Well, I thought I'd share a story because... well, it's rather ironic. I mean, really ironic. Kind of embarrassing, really, but that's what the internet subsists off of!
Anyway, as... none of you know, I actually don't have a high school degree. Being homeschooled, I never got one.
So, instead, I got to get my GED (Or General Education Degree, for you fancy pants people with a proper edumacation!).
Today I took my fourth of five tests, and lo and behold, I scored 95% in social studies (a 660 in their grading, about... oh... 160 points higher than I'd been scoring on the practice tests I'd done at home.)
So anyway, here's the kicker. While I'm on looking at my GED grades, I happen to notice something.
Language Arts: Reading was at a 85%
Science was at a 90%
Language Arts: Writing (and here's the kicker) was at... 27%
I bombed freaking writing. Not even joking. Do you know how humiliating (and simultaneously HILARIOUS) that is to me?!
I... I just... I don't even. I just don't even.
How is that even possible? How was the writing section formatted? Were you given a prompt or selection thereof to write from?
The only thing I can think of was that I misread the prompt on the essay portion of the test and wrote about the wrong topic. That'd be... half the grade, I think.
Still, there's a whole lot of points missing from that equation...
well as a graduate of the U.S. school system, I'd say don't kick your self for it. From my view trying to put a measuring stick to some material is fundamentally flawed. I mean you can test a technique that's been taught like math, or reciting back facts, but you can't really test a person skills by technique. It's like how Einstein put it, "if you try to test a fish for it's ability to clime a tree, it will inevitably feel like a failure.
oh, that's just unfortunate.
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Somehow I get the feeling that pretty soon people are going to suspect that I'm not actually the real Mister Friendly, and that I break into the real guy's house every now and then to steal his fics, and that updates have slowed down because he's on to me.
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Well, I guess there was a reason why I dropped out of school in the first place.
You know, aside from the psycho teacher trying to put me on medication to make me focus in class.
Dude, I regularly get C-'s in Social Studies and English. Ask me something.
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Something?
1032866 Franklin D. Roosevelt, August 6, 1943. Mostly because of Admiral Nimitz's burning hatred of Edith Piaf. Bring it on, bitches.
...I warned you about how you break up paragraphs and making the dialogue for one pony stay in the same paragraph as said speaker. I WARNED YOU!
Gloating having been accomplished, there is a big different between Writing and Story Telling. You can be excellent at grammar, but tell a really sucky story. If you were, say, submitting an article to a magazine or something, it might matter. Story Telling, you can suck at all the basic principles of grammar and writing, but tell a DAMN good story. People do it everyday. It's called fanfiction ^_^ And sometimes, it's called a best-selling novel...
I rarely read any fanfiction any more, but when I was newer to the world of fanfics, I always remembered reading these two stories for a fandom I was part of that showed this perfectly. One writer had excellent skills, but she lacked the build needed to keep the reader engaged, and her stories were often, "Almost there, but so far off..." and always lose my interest. Another story, I gave it a chance because the premise in the summary sounded horrible, even though her writing skills were TERRIBLE. But I was hooked by the second chapter because damnit, she had a good idea, ran with it, and makes me STILL think of her story to this day.
Anyways, if it REALLY concerns you, you need to brush up on your technical skills - know the rules before you break them. But if you're like me and most people who just wanna tell a story, just keep doing what you're doing and brush up on your story-telling skills. Write prompts, buy books about how to build to an appropriate denouement, and thus deliver a successful pay off, learn how to build sentences in a way that focuses the importance of what is said - all that jazz. And never stop trying out new ways to write. And read bad critiques - learn from other people's mistakes (or sometimes, just what an audience expects from a story, and whether you agree or not).
As I mentioned, I rarely read fanfiction anymore, but i'm hooked on your story, and even comment on it. So that's saying a LOT ^_~ Don't fret too much, Sugarcube
That's...crazy. Just flippin' crazy!
I mean, look at just how well you write! All it took was for me to read the first few paragraphs of "The Irony of Applejack", and I was totally and irrevocably hooked! To the point that I've been waiting with bated breath (and on the edge of my seat!) for the appearance of Chapter 14 since the end of Chapter 13! It's that griping, and you write that well.
Anyway, like you, I think you might just have misread something on the test. So don't beat yourself up over it. You are both an excellent writer and storyteller, and that's what ultimately counts.
I concur with Callisto. A technically perfect paragraph can be so uninteresting that you can't bring yourself to finish reading it; but if a story is good enough, it doesn't matter if it's written in Cave Man. (Not that yours is badly written, of course.
)
Beyond that, the graders of writing prompts have one of the most subjective jobs on the planet. Since they are supposed to be impartial, they basically ignore what you have to say and take points off for obscure grammatical rules that nobody knows or cares about. In other words, an idiot with a word processor (If they were allowed one, that is) would get a better score than a genius who tends towards run-on sentences.
The bottom line is, the score on a writing test has very little to do with the creative skill of an author.
The score on a writing test has very little to do with the creative skill of an author. The score on a writing test has very little to do with the creative skill of an author. The score on a writing test has very little to do with the creative skill of an author. The score on a writing test has very little to do with the creative skill of an author. The score on a writing test has very little to do with the creative skill of an author. The score on a writing test has very little to do with the creative skill of an author. The score on a writing test has very little to do with the creative skill of an author. The score on a writing test has very little to do with the creative skill of an author. The score on a writing test has very little to do with the creative skill of an author. The score on a writing test has very little to do with the creative skill of an author. The score on a writing test has very little to do with the creative skill of an author. The score on a writing test has very little to do with the creative skill of an author. The score on a writing test has very little to do with the creative skill of an author. The score on a writing test has very little to do with the creative skill of an author. The score on a writing test has very little to do with the creative skill of an author. The score on a writing test has very little to do with the creative skill of an author. The score on a writing test has very little to do with the creative skill of an author. The score on a writing test has very little to do with the creative skill of an author. The score on a writing test has very little to do with the creative skill of an author.
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I feel like I should explain this to everyone and not just the author. Here's my guess.
Great at creative writing.
Bad at writing essays.
Despite both being about writing, the rules for them are very different.
I speak as someone who was a writing tutor at a college for a year. I have had some people who were great at writing one type of essay but terrible at another. The one I remember in particular was this student who, accorrding to my coworkers, was pretty good at writing informative essays. However, he was having trouble writing essays for a humanity-type class. The problem was he wasn't good at explaining the "why" portion of a culture trait.
In any case, being good at writing stories isn't a guarentee about being good in writing in general. However, that doesn't mean you're a bad writer. You are still a wonderful storyteller. I have read all of The Irony of Applejack after all.
In short, don't fret about it.