Metacognition: The Kite Runner Essay

Pauses. Interruptions. Breaks. Discontinuity. Long, short, you name it. My time spent working on my essay was abundant with these calamities. My thinking shaped itself in this manner as well. As I sat down on a Sunday evening to begin the menacing challenge that lay before me, I was empty. Clueless. I had spent the entire past week working on my evidence plan, yet when I came face to face with the computer screen, I didn’t know where to begin. I stared at my evidence plan for ten minutes (No! I fell into the trap). The introduction? Yes, that seems like a good place to start. I faintly remember as I was creating my evidence plan a spark had jolted into my mind. I had come up with an attention getter amidst my deep thought of The Kite Runner text. What was it again...? Gosh, darn it. I should have written the darn thing down. My memory fails yet again. Okay, let’s return to this later.

The blank page before my eyes blinded me with shame. The blinking cursor was a constant reminder of the work not yet begun. Then, I decided to take your (do I speak in second person?) advice. I started with the body paragraphs. I had them planned out, so it shouldn’t be that much of a struggle. I began creating these minute miracles that rescued me from the emptiness that radiated at me. However, I realized that I had to reacquaint myself with the evidence plan I had written. I hadn’t glanced at this for about a week, and honestly I had forgotten some things. Once this revival of my structural thought began to occur, my thinking was more fluid. The body paragraphs flowed from my mind through my fingertips and onto the virtual piece of paper. However, this process was exhausting. Writing made me hungry. I had to take breaks. After completing each paragraph, I sat back in my chair and breathed in and out deeply. Then, I left for five minutes to eat a snack and relax a bit. This happened throughout my entire essay writing. Running back and forth, up and down, in order to exit my “writing” mode.

Writing the introduction and conclusion differed from creating the body paragraphs. I tried my best to follow the examples you (or Mr. Allen?) had given, but I couldn’t. After many failed attempts at testing different attention getters, I ended up kind of combining two methods. I also tried to utilize the ideas I learned from Beat by Beat. I began with words that had the ending syllables ring. Then, I separated them with commas to emphasize each. The final clause ended up being lengthier and comma-free in an attempt to speed up the tempo. I ended the statement with a question mark because my attention getter referenced confusion and craziness; this punctuation mark allowed me to grasp that uncertainty and that touch of craziness by ending what should be a declarative sentence with a sign of hesitance. From there I followed the simple structural format to finish my introduction. I did this as well with my conclusion, except I made an extra effort to include the novel’s ending as a final example and symbol of importance of the claim I was making.

My thinking is a difficult one to describe. It is on and off and acts in various ways. I don’t think it’s effective because I become too absorbed into the details of what I do and prevents me from looking at my essay as a whole. What surprises me is that my sporadic thinking hurts my essay in a way because it constantly cuts off the flow of what I was saying. I mentioned that I had forgotten my initial attention getter. This was an obstacle for me in starting my essay because my flow had been cut off. I think if I had least remembered that, I would have started my work on my essay better. What I like about my thinking is that I give the ideas I’m making full thought and make an extra effort to develop them fully. This is also what I don’t like because this often is time-consuming. I would like to improve on the speed of my thinking. I need to try and get into the flow of my essay at an earlier stage. One way I could do this is begin with the body paragraphs right off the bat (it helps).