Quote of The Day Mini Essay

CTCR, Mr. Legg

8/31/2021

Assignment: Pick a quote from the last 5 discussed and write an (15 minute) explanation of the
quote’s meaning and your thoughts on it.

This piece is informative because it’s short and sweet, written in fifteen minutes. I think it
demonstrates multiple aspects of me, as it is semi-creative writing and an open ended/personal
interpretation of a quote.

In this assignment (besides learning the actual quote) I learned more about myself and how to
get a point across in a short period of time. Because there was only fifteen minutes, there was
no time to think too far ahead and plan out a structure, so I had to quickly formulate a clear
message, convey it in a small amount of words, and illustrate that message with a correctly
structured paragraph in which the evidence and personal anecdotes had to be placed in the
right order. Specifically, I learned to make the message as clear as possible by writing simple,
explicit sentences, which is something I’ve struggled with. Additionally, I learned about myself
regarding critical thinking. I had not consciously thought about the idea I wrote about (being
open minded to every idea you come across) before this assignment.

This assignment was extremely beneficial to me with college essays, specifically the UC
personal insight questions. Being afforded only 350 words, you have to make a clear point in as
little words as possible, with personal anecdotes. This assignment was essentially a mini
personal insight question and allowed me to practice and critique my ability to write concisely.

I would give myself a 4/4 for performance. I was able to form a satisfactory structure and
elaborate on my points very well relative to my previous assignments. For the final product, I
would give it a ¾. While I did well relative to myself, I think my points could have been
elaborated on slightly more, and a personal story would have made the piece much stronger.
Overall, I’m very happy with this piece because I took away from it: I got a little better at writing
clearly and concisely and if nothing else, I was more conscious in the future to make clear
points.

If I had to re-do it, I would come up with a personal story to illustrate my point before writing
anything else. During the fifteen minutes, I ran out of time to write an anecdote, so in the next
Mini Essay’s, I jot down the beginnings of a story. Little exercises and tactics like this have
tremendously helped me already, specifically with college applications. If you look at my rough
draft UC personal insight question compared to the finished products on the portfolio, there is a
clear difference in my ability to illustrate a message and develop it.