Earlier this semester, I signed up for English Composition 1 with the expectation of doing well, because I had done well in my AP Literature course that I had taken 4 months prior on semester. I was always taught to have a great idea and build upon it, but the very foundations of writing an essay – its unity, coherence and flow thrown out the window – were never thought through. After receiving careful scrutiny on sentence structure and grammar for my first article, I quickly realized that while I could write a good 200 word article. I lacked grammatical skills; the patience, interest, and raw talent to create a college-level essay. My focus had completely shifted from getting the best grade possible in class to improving my identity as a writer; no matter what grade I got, I was willing to put up with it. Building an essay is like building a beautiful house; it takes time and patience. My portfolio is a demonstration of how much I have. Our first essay required us to write a descriptive summary of a day or event in our lives and had to be somewhat reflective; it was a great foundation for developing our skills as writers. So I tried to find a single topic to focus my thesis on, but I lacked sophistication because I couldn't unify my sentence structure. Even though I had decided to focus my essay on tiredness, I still found myself creating useless and non-descriptive sentences like “it was a beautiful day, the sky was blue”. Before starting this lesson, such sentences would suffice as a descriptive sentence, although they are completely separate from the main thesis. I learned that the foundation of a good essay is built around a great thesis, because a thesis determined the structure: the... center of the paper... at first I couldn't tell the difference between a final draft and a document finished. A finished document is supposed to be free from small errors; I had comma splices everywhere, even though I revised my article, it still wasn't doing enough proofreading. Even though I got an 80 on essay 4, I was happy that there was a big distinction between ab and ad paper. Building my house was difficult, painful, but I had to learn to be willing to take it one brick house at a time. one, making sure the foundation is secure from the bottom up. At times, I had to destroy the house and start all over again, reflecting on my many failures in creating this house; it was a little depressing, but at the same time fulfilling to know that I had achieved success through my repeated failures. Luckily, I had a teacher who was willing to teach me and many others the basics of building their own home.