Emotive Response to Essays

In tenth grade, everyone in Mrs. D’s English class had to write an essay on an American author. No one was actually given a choice in the matter, nor was anyone allowed the option of choosing their author. That kind of option wouldn’t have meant much to me anyway, seeing as I, like many sophomores in high school, had no interest in anything even remotely intellectual. Fate’s ubiquitous hand dealt me Sherwood Anderson, a man I had never heard of (nor did I frankly care to know about). Despite the cliché one might expect at this point, research did nothing to change my apathy towards this essay. I wrote down the standard encyclopedic style biography that defined the efforts of most of my fellow classmates. After all of us were through embarrassing ourselves by reading said biographies in front of the class in the usual self-conscious manner that defines high school presentations, I felt no different. It was clear that Anderson cared deeply about the work that he did in his lifetime, but I certainly didn’t. The self-imposed mediocrity continued uninterrupted by tenth grade English, as I expected.

Shortly after this assignment, Mrs. D continued her Tenth grade English syllabus with a Unit on “Appreciating Poetry” which was equally if not less exciting than the essay I had completed on Sherwood Anderson. The wizened and possibly wigged (or so the rumors went) Mrs. D saw to it that our first assignment in appreciating the art of poetry was that we were all to write poems of our own and once again embarrass ourselves in front of the class through recitation. Enter the predictable protagonal change. My poem was quite short and completely free verse, of course. But as I wrote it, I started to care how it sounded in my head and when I re...

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...g, I probably would not have listened. This was most certainly something that I had to come to on my own. The only method to reach this plateau was writing on my own, and as much as I could. The key realization being that language was not some powerful structure that I could just tap into every now and again, but instead it was a set of signs that were in my complete control and jurisdiction to manipulate in a way that would reach readers, and more importantly myself, in an emotional way. The power lay not within the words, but in my ability to use them. In essence, these experiences with writing teachers did not affect me in and of themselves. The combined lessons on writing from all of my teachers, coupled with my own fascination with the power and effectiveness of words and language, brought me to the point I am at now: with writing as an integral part of my life.