College Writing From A High School Perspective: Looking From The Outside In

At my high school my teachers tended to require us to meet draft deadlines in order to ensure that we were writing drafts before turning in the final product. That was great, but they often only required one or two drafts as opposed to the six or so that Dr. E suggests. I found myself of course doing the required drafts, but not really doing any extra drafts, even if I needed them. Also, in most cases, my high school teacher would sit down with me and edit the paper with me if I had it done a week or so in advance in order to ensure 1) that I was meeting all of the requirements 2) that I was analyzing properly 3) that I was on topic and 4) that I did not have any grammar and syntax errors. I get the feeling that in college not many professors will be willing to do that with me.

Granted we do have great resources such as the writing center, but there is nothing like that reassurance that you can get from the person who will be grading the paper that it is a good paper. Because of my teachers willingness to help, I often got A's on papers, with possibly an occasional B here and there. I know that the standards are much different in college though. I have the feeling that I will have to "unthink" that which I have learned and relearn the writing process as a whole yet again. I do feel like I have had good instruction and thinking and writing analytically in high school, but I just have no idea what to expect in this university setting.

So far in Hjortshoj's book I have noticed that he knows exactly what the high school writer's though process is and has some suggestions of how to solve it, but I still do not really know what to think or expect. I just hope that as I continue reading Hjortshoj and Writing Analytically I get a better idea of what the whole picture of a good college paper looks like, rather than just being completely ignorant as to how the process goes and what an "A" college paper looks like.