The first and last time I thought about writing...
"Okay everyone, let’s settle down. We have a lot to get done today. Now today we are going to do something a little different. We are going to try and get those creative juices flowing. Now none of these methods may work for you, but they are something to try. For right now you do not need anything. We are just going to sit,” Mr. Buckley, my sixth grade writing and science teacher said as he walked around the room. This was something new. This was going to be a fun day; a day where a single sixth grader might begin to see what writing could do for her. Rather than sitting and writing the boring essay that I had been and would continue to be taught in the years to come, this was a day where I could see writing as something so much more.
“I want everyone to close their eyes. Get to a quiet place, a place where you can just sit and think.” Mr. Buckley walked around the room. I was one of the good children following his instructions by keeping my eyes closed. As the silence stretched on Mr. Buckley began his instructions. We were to keep our eyes closed and to use our imagination. Whatever we saw we were to follow. After a few minutes of that we would be able to open our eyes and write down whatever it was we saw.
As we sat at our desks, a soft music began to fill the room. It was slow at first and then began to swell. I wish I could remember the song that gave me visions of a woman covered in feathers dancing with a man on a lake of ice. I wish I could remember the visions that had filled my head with such vivid scenes.
There is so much that I have forgotten about that day, but despite all of that, it has stuck with me. That was a day that I will never forget because it was something that I was rarely asked to do. Never before was I asked to picture a story and to write it down. It was not for another six years that a teacher thought creative writing was something students need to experience. Whenever I think about the task Mr. Buckley set me, I think about how little thought I had to put into my writing throughout middle and high school. I put in a lot of work over the years, but none of it mattered. I don’t think about the assignments that I was given and say, “Wow, I was really challenged in school.” No, I think, “Wow, I don’t remember a single assignment that mattered.”
After sixth grade, all I remember about writing in school was the essay. There were different variations and I am sure I wrote creatively, but it never mattered because it was not the focus. Creative writing was used to break up the monotony, not to teach us how to write something that mattered to the students. I had teachers who tried to infuse a little creativity, but because of the idea that we were prepping for college and our tests that would get us into college, our teachers would always circle back to the essay that would get us to the land of higher education.
“I want everyone to close their eyes. Get to a quiet place, a place where you can just sit and think.” Mr. Buckley walked around the room. I was one of the good children following his instructions by keeping my eyes closed. As the silence stretched on Mr. Buckley began his instructions. We were to keep our eyes closed and to use our imagination. Whatever we saw we were to follow. After a few minutes of that we would be able to open our eyes and write down whatever it was we saw.
As we sat at our desks, a soft music began to fill the room. It was slow at first and then began to swell. I wish I could remember the song that gave me visions of a woman covered in feathers dancing with a man on a lake of ice. I wish I could remember the visions that had filled my head with such vivid scenes.
There is so much that I have forgotten about that day, but despite all of that, it has stuck with me. That was a day that I will never forget because it was something that I was rarely asked to do. Never before was I asked to picture a story and to write it down. It was not for another six years that a teacher thought creative writing was something students need to experience. Whenever I think about the task Mr. Buckley set me, I think about how little thought I had to put into my writing throughout middle and high school. I put in a lot of work over the years, but none of it mattered. I don’t think about the assignments that I was given and say, “Wow, I was really challenged in school.” No, I think, “Wow, I don’t remember a single assignment that mattered.”
After sixth grade, all I remember about writing in school was the essay. There were different variations and I am sure I wrote creatively, but it never mattered because it was not the focus. Creative writing was used to break up the monotony, not to teach us how to write something that mattered to the students. I had teachers who tried to infuse a little creativity, but because of the idea that we were prepping for college and our tests that would get us into college, our teachers would always circle back to the essay that would get us to the land of higher education.
The Ten Pages That Almost Killed Me
It wasn’t for an English class that I spent the evening rushing to finish a ten page paper due the next day. It was for Mrs. Cotter’s tenth grade American History class. At some point toward the end of the year, we were handed an assignment sheet. At the top in big bold letters were the words “Ten page research paper,” with all the possible paper topics below. When my eyes fell on the words NASA and Space Race, I knew I was done. I had found my topic and was ready to go. I raised my hand and snatched that topic.
When it came time to start writing I had no idea where to begin. Luckily, I was told to turn in an outline, and a first draft at strategic points during the weeks leading up to the final due date. I sat through lessons where we were taught how to find sources, how to write an outline, but never the essential lesson that I needed. The question I had then still linger in my mind today. How the hell was I supposed to write a ten page paper?
Where do I start? Where do I put in sources? Where do I add my ideas? Do I add my ideas? These were all questions that I needed answers to, but never got. I wanted to be taught, and up till that point I had never been taught how to write something longer than a page and a half filled with five horrible paragraphs.
Rather than writing, I waited. I waited for inspiration to hit me or Mrs. Cotter to teach me. Maybe I would magically figure out the formula to the ten page paper, after all there's one for five paragraphs, surely there's one for ten pages. Or at least that’s what I assumed based on my last ten years of education. But the waiting game didn’t work. Eventually I was forced to turn in an outline, and then a first draft. But where did those steps get me? I still didn’t know how to write my final paper.
I waited for so long that the due date snuck up and surprised me two days before it was due. I was forced to sit at my computer and write. I wrote about communism and the Red Scare. I wrote about the nuclear arms race and how that buildup of technology worked with the space race, and I wrote about NASA. All of these pieces of my paper were put together, but they didn’t fit right, because at the end of my two days of furious writing, I still didn’t have ten pages worth of writing. I couldn’t turn that in, could I? I had a pretty good paper, but it wasn’t long enough and the length that I did have was filled with the same phrases and points repeated over and over again in different wording. I didn’t know how much the length was worth, or if it was an arbitrary and impossible length put on a paper that I was never taught how to write.
So when the due date came I handed Mrs. Cotter my short paper. And what happened? Nothing. I got a couple of points take away for having a paper shorter then assigned, but nothing that really changed the final grade. Instead I was handed back a paper that I still didn’t know how to write. I learned nothing from that assignment other than the fact that I can write ten page papers with only eight pages and still get an A.
When it came time to start writing I had no idea where to begin. Luckily, I was told to turn in an outline, and a first draft at strategic points during the weeks leading up to the final due date. I sat through lessons where we were taught how to find sources, how to write an outline, but never the essential lesson that I needed. The question I had then still linger in my mind today. How the hell was I supposed to write a ten page paper?
Where do I start? Where do I put in sources? Where do I add my ideas? Do I add my ideas? These were all questions that I needed answers to, but never got. I wanted to be taught, and up till that point I had never been taught how to write something longer than a page and a half filled with five horrible paragraphs.
Rather than writing, I waited. I waited for inspiration to hit me or Mrs. Cotter to teach me. Maybe I would magically figure out the formula to the ten page paper, after all there's one for five paragraphs, surely there's one for ten pages. Or at least that’s what I assumed based on my last ten years of education. But the waiting game didn’t work. Eventually I was forced to turn in an outline, and then a first draft. But where did those steps get me? I still didn’t know how to write my final paper.
I waited for so long that the due date snuck up and surprised me two days before it was due. I was forced to sit at my computer and write. I wrote about communism and the Red Scare. I wrote about the nuclear arms race and how that buildup of technology worked with the space race, and I wrote about NASA. All of these pieces of my paper were put together, but they didn’t fit right, because at the end of my two days of furious writing, I still didn’t have ten pages worth of writing. I couldn’t turn that in, could I? I had a pretty good paper, but it wasn’t long enough and the length that I did have was filled with the same phrases and points repeated over and over again in different wording. I didn’t know how much the length was worth, or if it was an arbitrary and impossible length put on a paper that I was never taught how to write.
So when the due date came I handed Mrs. Cotter my short paper. And what happened? Nothing. I got a couple of points take away for having a paper shorter then assigned, but nothing that really changed the final grade. Instead I was handed back a paper that I still didn’t know how to write. I learned nothing from that assignment other than the fact that I can write ten page papers with only eight pages and still get an A.
Senior Year
Like many others, when I started my senior year I was ready to be finished. I was ready to leave Holt for college. My life had changed so much in the past four years that I just wanted to close that chapter and move on to the next one. I was finished with my ACT’s and MME’s. The only tests I had to take were the AP exams at the end of the year, and then I would be forever finished with my time as a student in high school.
There were two classes my senior year that have stuck with me. Not everything was good, and not everything was bad. But the books I read and the papers I wrote and stayed in the back of my mind because I knew they should. These would be the last classes I would ever take in high school and I knew that I should do everything I could to make them count.
During my first trimester I was filled to the brim with classes. I was trying to finish all of the requirements but also trying to have a little bit of fun. So I took a creative writing course. I had flashbacks to my sixth grade visions of dancing and feathers and wanted to relive that experience. So I walked into class hoping that I would be inspired to write down some of the scenes I could feel floating on the edges of my imagination.
What I found was a class that did what I thought it should. It showed me how to find inspiration and how to write using that inspiration. Creative writing gave me a place to explore what I thought I had always wanted to explore. I had always wanted to write short stories, but I never had a teacher who could show me how. As the class went by I realized that it was not my thing. I could write down the scene in my head, but I couldn’t move further than that. I was stuck at one point. And I was okay with that. All I had wanted from the class was a place to explore, and I got that. It was something that I had never had from any other teacher, and I cherished the time I had in my creative writing class. I was given my opportunity to explore, and even though my products were not nearly as good as some of my classmates, at least I knew that I had tried.
New was not something I was accustomed to in my A.P. Literature course. While my teacher, Mr. Lawson had been at our school for only a few short years, he could not keep the class new and interesting. At the beginning of the year I was excited and happy to be in my first A.P. course. I always thought I could do the work, but for some reason or another I ended up in the regular English classes. I wanted to make this final year of classes count, and A.P. Lit. was the way to do it. The course was not what I expected, and did not meet the expectation of preparing me for the A.P. test at the end of the school year.
The summer before my senior year, the class was given the assignment of reading and then writing reactions to a selection of Greek and Roman myths and a number of selections from the Bible. Mr. Lawson informed us that the assignment was to create a base for the year of literature to come. We would be reading many texts that pulled inspiration from myths and the Bible and that it would be beneficial to familiarize ourselves with those sources before we began the year.Throughout the summer I read and summarized the 50 plus myths and stories that were asked of us. A task that many of my classmates failed to complete, and that many of us failed to receive grades above a C. It was a task that proved useless when they were never talked about. We never looked at a text (other than the obvious Greek plays that we read) and thought about how the author pulled their inspiration from the Bible or the Greeks. Many students were upset at the thought of reading the Bible for class; I was upset at the thought of that work going to waste by never talking about it.
That became a trend for the class. We would have the beginnings of a great assignment with no follow through on Mr. Lawson’s part. As far as I know, there was nothing we could do. We sat in out chairs and tried to play nice. We tried to answer his repetitive questions, and to write the papers that were assigned. Perhaps we could have met Mr. Lawson half way, but toward the end there was nothing in class solidifying the work we were told to do outside of class.
In the end, the whole course was structured to prepare us for the A.P. exam. From the books that we read to the paper topics, we prepared to take a test. We were not there to learn how to read and write about literature. No, we were there to try and get college credit, something that didn’t even happen for me. In the end, I was not prepared for the test, and I didn’t get the credit I needed to make college just a little cheaper and quicker.
So what was the point? I was there to learn, and for me the credit didn’t really mean anything. I was disappointed that I didn’t get the score needed, but I ended up taking many classes that helped my writing in college.
Assignments
The Greeks Fate - A.P. Lit
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rcC28Cx-vh5NfaEPsT3aI9Y8y_3v2kvWS6CpfG2CA18/edit
A.P. Lit Summer Journal
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DgzAtO4KLUGMIkY00NlS5ruT3IdaGxXaQYcpVCAKuC4/edit
There were two classes my senior year that have stuck with me. Not everything was good, and not everything was bad. But the books I read and the papers I wrote and stayed in the back of my mind because I knew they should. These would be the last classes I would ever take in high school and I knew that I should do everything I could to make them count.
During my first trimester I was filled to the brim with classes. I was trying to finish all of the requirements but also trying to have a little bit of fun. So I took a creative writing course. I had flashbacks to my sixth grade visions of dancing and feathers and wanted to relive that experience. So I walked into class hoping that I would be inspired to write down some of the scenes I could feel floating on the edges of my imagination.
What I found was a class that did what I thought it should. It showed me how to find inspiration and how to write using that inspiration. Creative writing gave me a place to explore what I thought I had always wanted to explore. I had always wanted to write short stories, but I never had a teacher who could show me how. As the class went by I realized that it was not my thing. I could write down the scene in my head, but I couldn’t move further than that. I was stuck at one point. And I was okay with that. All I had wanted from the class was a place to explore, and I got that. It was something that I had never had from any other teacher, and I cherished the time I had in my creative writing class. I was given my opportunity to explore, and even though my products were not nearly as good as some of my classmates, at least I knew that I had tried.
New was not something I was accustomed to in my A.P. Literature course. While my teacher, Mr. Lawson had been at our school for only a few short years, he could not keep the class new and interesting. At the beginning of the year I was excited and happy to be in my first A.P. course. I always thought I could do the work, but for some reason or another I ended up in the regular English classes. I wanted to make this final year of classes count, and A.P. Lit. was the way to do it. The course was not what I expected, and did not meet the expectation of preparing me for the A.P. test at the end of the school year.
The summer before my senior year, the class was given the assignment of reading and then writing reactions to a selection of Greek and Roman myths and a number of selections from the Bible. Mr. Lawson informed us that the assignment was to create a base for the year of literature to come. We would be reading many texts that pulled inspiration from myths and the Bible and that it would be beneficial to familiarize ourselves with those sources before we began the year.Throughout the summer I read and summarized the 50 plus myths and stories that were asked of us. A task that many of my classmates failed to complete, and that many of us failed to receive grades above a C. It was a task that proved useless when they were never talked about. We never looked at a text (other than the obvious Greek plays that we read) and thought about how the author pulled their inspiration from the Bible or the Greeks. Many students were upset at the thought of reading the Bible for class; I was upset at the thought of that work going to waste by never talking about it.
That became a trend for the class. We would have the beginnings of a great assignment with no follow through on Mr. Lawson’s part. As far as I know, there was nothing we could do. We sat in out chairs and tried to play nice. We tried to answer his repetitive questions, and to write the papers that were assigned. Perhaps we could have met Mr. Lawson half way, but toward the end there was nothing in class solidifying the work we were told to do outside of class.
In the end, the whole course was structured to prepare us for the A.P. exam. From the books that we read to the paper topics, we prepared to take a test. We were not there to learn how to read and write about literature. No, we were there to try and get college credit, something that didn’t even happen for me. In the end, I was not prepared for the test, and I didn’t get the credit I needed to make college just a little cheaper and quicker.
So what was the point? I was there to learn, and for me the credit didn’t really mean anything. I was disappointed that I didn’t get the score needed, but I ended up taking many classes that helped my writing in college.
Assignments
The Greeks Fate - A.P. Lit
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rcC28Cx-vh5NfaEPsT3aI9Y8y_3v2kvWS6CpfG2CA18/edit
A.P. Lit Summer Journal
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DgzAtO4KLUGMIkY00NlS5ruT3IdaGxXaQYcpVCAKuC4/edit