After reading the blog post “Bridging the Writing Gap: Centering Student Voices in High School and College Writing.” by Kristen Marakoff and P.L. Thomas, I found that many of the writing gaps they discussed matched my high school experience. For example, The Choice Gap is something that I struggled with when transitioning from high school to college. I became so accustomed to having my teachers provide me with different prompts when assigning an essay. Normally, I would be able to look at the list of choices and pick whichever one I felt was the easiest for me to complete. In college, I can not think of a single professor that has given me a list of prompts to write an essay. Although, in English classes specifically, I have been given a choice between novels to write about, the topic of my essay had to be original. This still proves to be difficult for me and I find myself spending more time coming up with a topic than I do actually writing the essay. However, although it is difficult, I ultimately enjoy choosing my own topic because it allows me to be more creative and normally I am more invested in what I come up with as opposed to picking from a list of prompts.
The second gap that reflected my high school experience is The Revision Gap. I remember in multiple English classes having to provide drafts and participate in peer review sessions. These sessions normally focused on basic editing such as grammar, spelling and punctuation.
Sean's Blog 
I often assign students writing prompts, but I leave choice and I give students the option of creating their own. We can give structure while also leaving space for creativity. Also, I note your point about picking the easiest one, which is a smart approach to work. I try hard to make sure all my prompts are equally challenging and equally instructive. That’s the point of them, right?
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I was also not allowed to choose my own topic as much when I was in high school. I found it a bit disappointing, as well. I felt, at the time, that if I was able to choose my own topic more often, I would’ve been able to generate more ideas, which would’ve helped me more in college than it did when I first got to Stony Brook. When it was time to revise our essays, I’d swap words, correct grammar, and I’d tend to correct punctuation, but I NEVER usually revised my work with the purpose of adding more content.
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The Choice Gap is also something that had a great impact on me when transitioning from high school to college. Personally, I hated the writing prompts given out in high school. I always felt like they were too formal and never allowed for much outside thinking or creativity. I understand it is supposed to make it easier for students to write about one topic or another and prepare immensely for said topic(s), but I still do not agree with the idea of giving them. Overall, I feel like it limits our writing abilities as students and does not help us prepare for life outside the high school classroom. Once again, I agree, being given the freedom to create out own topics for the essays we write in college has proven to be difficult. But I would much rather struggle a bit and in turn become a better writer, than have a prompt given to me and simply struggle with it altogether and not be able to improve my writing because of it.
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I think this is a very relatable experience. When I first started taking College English classes, it was a real shock to me when I had to pick my own topics and then write a paper on it. When I was in High School, I always thought that picking your own topic would be easier than writing about a topic I did not like. And while it may be, the shock of being able to choose a topic about a book you were assigned and the adjustment to writing it was still unexpected from my High School experience
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It can be difficult finding a topic to write about, especially at the collegiate level. While observing in a local high school I’ve noticed that things, specifically writing topics, are laid out for the students in advance. There is not much thought or creativity required to choose a topic. Though this takes some of the pressure off of the student, it doesn’t allow them to think for themselves and formulate something both interesting and challenging.
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