I have had a lot of experience with timed writing exams. In high school, we wrote most of our English essays in a timed setting. They have been of many different lengths, just depending on the work we were writing about. They were usually analytical essays about texts that we read. I usually did pretty well on them. My teacher was a very hard grader, so my writing skills grew exponentially in her class. I definitely had trouble at the start of her class, but by the end, I was doing very well.

I also had to write a couple in-class essays in my Writing 101 class, which I also did very well on.

I think that the In-Class Essay for Writing 102 went well. I had a good outline and thesis prepared, so it was just about sitting down and actually writing the paper. I felt like my organization and getting it all on the page went very well, but trying to find evidence for my points was difficult. I forgot to prepare evidence, so I was scrambling a little bit during the essay. Since this prompt was weird for evidence it would have been better to have found evidence beforehand. I did learn about my research topic because of reading the text so many times, and I think I created a strong base for my paper.

I would tell students preparing for a timed writing exam to plan ahead. They should read the article multiple times, take notes on it, and create a game plan for what they are going to do once they sit down to write their paper.