I couldn't write...
When I was in elementary school, I was never very confident with my reading and writing. I always knew that I wasn't doing as well as my friends. Looking back at some of my writing has solidified in my head how terrible I was. I could never seem to get the hang of spelling, all of those letters that didn't match up with their sounds drove me crazy. Eventually I figured it out, just like my mom thought I would. But to this day, if you were to ask some of my friends they would tell you that my spelling and hand writing is atrocious, and it all stems from my early days in elementary school. All through middle and high school I was labeled as the girl who cannot write. It wasn't that I couldn't write a paper; it was that my physical writing could not be decoded because of all of the errors. It has stuck with me for a long time, not because of anything my teachers told me, but because of a perception that I was a bad writer. That perception stuck with me for a long time, and I wonder if there was anything my teachers could have done about it.
I began to take note of writing in about second grade. Before that it was just something that I did, not anything of importance...
After second grade I started to realize something about writing. I was not good at it. The letters would not work right for me, and I struggled to hide the embarrassment that I felt when I saw myself at the bottom of the third grade spellers. I worked really hard for a while, but after a year of constantly seeing my name on the bottom half of that list, I gave up. Eventually my spelling got better as my reading improved and I figured it out. But that feeling, the feeling of never being good at writing and always having your friends point out your bad spelling or sloppy handwriting never went away. I was never the person who wrote things out during group work. Even today I shy away from writing for a group. I don't want those feelings of failure and ridicule to come back.
After elementary school I began to develop as a writer. I learned how to string my thoughts together to form an essay. My teachers tried to move away from the five-paragraph essay that I was taught in fifth grade, but it always seemed to hover in the background waiting for an assignment that I was not prepared for.
After elementary school I began to develop as a writer. I learned how to string my thoughts together to form an essay. My teachers tried to move away from the five-paragraph essay that I was taught in fifth grade, but it always seemed to hover in the background waiting for an assignment that I was not prepared for.