My Strengths and Weaknesses as an Essay Writer

When I sit down to write an essay,  I need to sit with a scrap piece of paper and brainstorm all of my ideas I have on the topic that has been given to me.  One of my weaknesses is that if I do not brainstorm or if I've left the assignment too late and don't get a chance to brainstorm before hand, i find my ideas are all over the place. I am bad for rambling on if I do not have a set structure for the essay including my thesis statement, my 3 or more supporting ideas, and then points to back up the 3 main supporting topics.  Another weakness I have is taking a very very long time to figure out what my thesis statement is and then writing the essay. In a way I am a perfectionist when it comes to writing essays. If given the time I will sit for hours trying to figure out which sentence sounds the best and in which order.  This can be a weakness and a strength.  It can be beneficial when I have enough time that I can go back and critique every single word but it can also work against me when I am only given a short amount of time.  For example my teacher last year would always give us essays that were to be written in class, which was only a 75 minute period.  Being a perfectionist, I struggled with being able to finish in the required time as I would be so focused on making the essay sound perfect.  I quickly learned that in that situation it is better to get my ideas down on paper and if there was time left, to go back and review my work.  I tried to work on this but ended up going a little over board when trying to get down all of my thoughts within the time period given. At the end of class, sometimes I would have written five pages front and back. I am still trying to find that balance of getting my information down but in an organized fashion.  My goal this year would be to revise my own essays instead of just heading the over to other people and trust that they know exactly what I meant at points that might not make sense to them.  I want to be able to pick out a sentence and recognize if I have made a grammatical error and be able to fix it myself.  I will still use other to help edit my work but i would like to be able to catch some of the "simple" mistakes I make ( as I'm told).  I wrote an essay for my law class last semester and I had my uncle, who is a lawyer, read it over for me and he help me and changed a lot.  The things that he changed, once he had brought attention to it, made a lot more sense when he changed them. Giving me that extra push of wanting to be able recognize these things within my essay that can be taken to the next step.