Friday, March 8, 2013


ENGLISH

I remember feeling so constrained. Each day I would show up to class unhappy. I didn’t want to be in an English class where all we did was analyze and respond to other people’s writings. It was boring beyond belief. The excerpts were always academic and professional and our responses were supposed to be similar. I did not understand the point.

I had always enjoyed writing. Expressing my thoughts on paper came much more natural than words. For a period of time, the academic response papers changed that. I felt as though I was not able to write the way that I enjoyed. We had to abide by a certain format, be mindful of word choice, and have impeccable grammar. Writing became more of a science than an art, and I hated it.

The next year, English changed. Poems, projects, plays, papers. We did it all. English was fun again. My grades in English that year were higher than they had ever been. It took me a while, but I finally realized that all the rules and restriction from the year before had done wonders for my writing. I was more aware of my sentence structures, my grammar was great, and I never used the words ‘is’ or ‘that’, words that had been forbidden.

Having English classes that were all about perfection were rough and it was hard to see the point at the time. When I look back at my scholarly career though, it all makes sense. Each teacher has a unique teaching style and emphasized different things. Collectively, all of the hard work along with the fun, creative assignments made me the writer that I am today.

What about you? Were all your English classes to die for, or did you have a couple of sour apples?

3 comments:

  1. I strongly believe that you get out what you put into something, and it sounds like after you put a lot into your English class, the next year you got a lot more out of it. I never put as much into English class as I probably should have, which is likely why I never got quite as much out of the class as it sounds like you did. I am the exact opposite of you also because I sometimes have trouble conveying a point or message through writing a paper but would be able to explain it to you through conversation with ease.

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  2. I really like your statement that "Writing became more of a science than an art, and I hated it." I think that writing truly is a little bit of both and while the logic/argument side appeals to some of us, the expressive/creative aspects of writing appeal to others. Different genres rely more heavily on one type of writing (analytical vs. expressive) than the other.

    I'm also just curious about the first class - the one that focused on responses to academic articles. Was it a college course or a high school course and what kinds of topics did it cover?

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  3. I like how you realized what the point of hard English classes was instead of simply complaining about it. It became something good and useful.
    I remember hating the long and boring grammar classes. I couldn't care less about perfect grammar at the time and have to admit that I sometimes still don't.

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