When it comes to my history with reading and writing it is a relatively scattered past with a decent level of proficiency due to my commitment to academics including literature and social studies based classes. The types of things I read commonly include web/reddit articles, song lyrics, and sometimes I’ll read either novels or graphic novels having to do with realistic fictional stories. Readings that most commonly catch my attention are those that set forth deep philosophical topics, and usually end in tragedy. These readings relate to my interest in reading song lyrics as they both commonly contain short lines or phrases that implicate a far more profound meaning. I find these readings to be so eye-catching because they entertain my imagination when it comes to aspects of everyday life, whether it be life’s purpose, or the how to pursue happiness day to day. A great memory I have about reading was back in sixth grade, when I had one of the best English teachers ever, she was a very funny and kind person, and she wanted to make sure we all had books we would be very interested in. She would go to lengths to even cater to the preferences she observed of us, and when it came to me she recommended the “Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children” series. It wasn’t even a month before I finished the whole series.
When it comes to writing my best memory would likely be last year, my senior year of high school, as I had a teacher that really understood how to get the emotions out of us in writing. This was very apparent in my college essay and sonnets as they were capable of bringing her to tears or leaving her with an impressed grin. All throughout highschool, there was a held requirement in many groups of courses, especially those surrounding social studies and English, thus I gained a level of specialty in writing historically informational essays, as well as more emotion based narratives for literature classes. When it comes to research the most I’ve really done were current events essays every week for AP US government and politics in which I would write about recent events from fresh news articles. I find the research process confusing sometimes in that I am not sure how to correctly cite my evidence in my writing, and it is very difficult in terms of actually finding things that align with what you are opinionating in your text, or even with the topic you are writing about in general. Moreover, I have rarely found enjoyment in working on a research paper as compared to creative writing.
My past English classes were a wide variety of both positive and negative experiences, ranging from classes where I became inspired to open up and write many meaningful papers with interest and intention in creating the best work of art I possibly could. Or the negative experiences in which I would receive criticism on my paper with no clear feedback that genuinely addresses what to fix and how. This is quite dissimilar to the positive experiences as in the better classes I was even comfortable with my teachers crossing out pages from my essay as I knew they would be giving me clear instructions and suggestions and how to fix it. I feel quite good about starting this class because I feel we will have an opportunity to write creative non fiction narratives, something that I would only want to get greater at. I would also like instruction on how to write proper research papers eventhough I dislike writing them. The pandemic has changed some of these habits though, in that I got a bit lazier with reading and researching, but far more creative and interested in writing than before.
