Not a Writer

I’ve never considered myself a ‘writer’. I’ve never found any particular joy in writing, annotating, or revising. Though, when I was thrust into a high school with a renowned and very well-respected English program, I figured I should take a stab at putting more of my energy into my essays and papers. In my 9th grade English class that focused on the Bible and biblical allusions, my teacher presented works and writing in a way I had never seen before. News flash for me! Writing didn’t have to follow the same format every time. Writing styles and frameworks could fluctuate and change. And in a most exciting turn of events, I discovered that if I was writing about something I liked or was passionate about, it could even be (gasp!) fun. We wrote analytic papers examining Antigone and the KJV Bible, romantic letters from Macbeth to his wife and so much more. This 9th grade English class got me off to a great start and while my some of my other subjects like math and science sometimes felt like more of an up and down roller coaster, my writing seemed to have slow but steady upward trajectory.

Throughout the rest of high school, as I navigated my way through different teachers and texts, I began to feel more confident in what I composed and turned in. Upon reflecting on an exhilarating senior year that was highlighted by my favorite English classes to date, I can proudly say that my writing came a long way during my time in high school. My examples got more specific, my paragraphs got tighter, and I embraced the concept of slashing sections if they didn’t help me prove my point.

I will admit that I still may not necessarily ‘love’ writing, but I do enjoy using my writer’s voice to make literary connections, spark new ideas and truth be told, I like writing pieces that make people laugh. One of my trademarks in high school was coming up with clever titles for papers, a tradition I hope to continue with this class. I also enjoy that my writing has the power to inspire and effect change. For my last paper of senior year, my teacher, Chris, asked us to write a reflection on his course. I had been thinking about this paper a lot as I thoroughly enjoyed the class and I wanted my last piece of writing to be detailed and honest, just as Chris had always been with us. I decided to tell him that I believed his class was named incorrectly. It was called “Home and Exile”, and while the texts we read certainly tackled some of those themes, I thought a more relevant title was “Relationships and Connections”. I used examples from every book, poem, and play that we read in that paper to try and convince him to change it, but I never got the essay back! I never learned what grade I got on that assignment or what he thought of my feedback until the day before my first day of classes at Northeastern. On Monday, September 1st at 10pm, Chris messaged me on Instagram which was an absolute first. He sent me a screenshot of his 12th grade syllabus for that year that read, “I used to call this course ‘Home and Exile,’ but last year Sara Flax offered a good critique of that title. The working title of this course at present is after an Alice Munro short story: “Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage”. I never thought he would take my commentary into serious thought let alone actually revise the title of the entire course. Learning that my written words made an impact made me feel smart, and powerful, and frankly, pretty darn good about myself.