What I want to learn

What I want to learn in english this year is how to write better essays and research papers of all kinds. While I have been applying to colleges a lot of them ask to write under a certain number of words, for example the UCF application wants 2 essays under 250 words I cant even get it under 500 without using detail. So what I want to get out of this class is being able to write a good essay under 250 words with using enough detail and thesis to get the readers attention. How I will be able to learn this in Mr. Parson's class will be to ask him questions and also read short stories under 250 words and pay attention to how the author gets to the point with enough detail to make a picture in my head. The big thing that I finally want to be able to learn and know how to do it is punctuation within my essays or any work that has to do with sentences for any class. I have always struggled with that because I feel like I use to many periods or commas in my papers. I use periods a lot I think because I want to prevent a run on sentence because I seem to be able to do that a lot, The reason I use a lot of commas is because I think that the sentence should continue because its the same topic of the sentence I'm writing about so I want to add on. I want to learn when the proper time is to use a period, comma, and when to use any other punctuation in my writing and to write with enough detail in short essays by the end of my senior year in my english class.