3. This writer is going to describe her greatest accomplishment, but she takes much too long to make her point. The opening sentence relies on a cliché ("We have nothing to fear but fear itself") to make its point, and the essay relies on the vague word "it" much too often. In addition, some of the writer's word choices are inappropriate ("I walked towards the office a little pondered"--"confused" or "worried" would have been more appropriate) and indicate a tendency to rely on big words when simpler ones will do. The writer is also a bit wordy ("all of my seventeen years on this earth;" "It literally came into effect"). The introduction also contains irrelevant information ("that principal only handled the math and science departments of the entire school.") and does not provide the reader with a sense that the writer has reflected on her experience and extracted its larger meaning. We are not quite sure, for example, how the statement about fear connects to the rest of the paragraph or what the main idea or thesis is.

Back to Introductions