By Cynthia Zeng
First day of first grade. I recall myself sitting in a mini seat with my name taped on a piece of paper at the top left corner. The teacher was handing out pieces of loose leaf paper so we could spell out our names. I vaguely remember that I had felt bored and did not want to write down the letters of my name, one by one. But I did it anyways and at the time, all I thought about was why I had to keep re-writing words over and over again.
Fast forward six years. I’m sitting in the front of my english class, as my teacher is giving a lecture on how to format a essay. I recall my attention span was focused on the notes my bestfriend and I were passing to each other. As my english teacher wraps up on how to draft a conclusion, I vaguely remember myself groaning silently. Time to write another essay……. What poem will it be about this time? Or maybe it’s going to be an analysis of another fictional character that I don’t care about.
As I am starting to type up my essay on the character development of Johnny Cade from the Outsiders, I still recall the boredness and emptiness that I was feeling for those few weeks. I was impassively typing up thousands of words, carefully following the instructions posted on the board, taking specific measures to make sure I am doing it “correctly”. To be more straight forward, I felt like a robot programmed to blindly follow the instructions on the smartboard in order to perform the task successfully. Three weeks of endless drafting and procrastination go by…… and finally my essay is complete. It has the three required body paragraphs, a introduction, conclusion, title, all incorporated with the right details.
At this point in my life, I still didn’t understand the purpose of writing. I was oblivious to the reason why others wrote. I never even questioned why I wrote. I hate to admit it, but I had no passion and no interest, to write. Whenever the topic of writing was brought up in my conversations with my classmates, it always consisted of two things. Procrastination and dread. I remember the hundreds of passionless conversations I had with my friends about the essays we wrote in class. Nobody would have ever guessed that one day I would have developed a liking for writing.
Fast forward to junior year of high school. Now the essays I wrote were even more complex and structured. I remember all I could think about was, How could I throw up a great essay in forty-five minutes? How could I get an A? At this point in my life, I actually did start to question the purpose of writing. What was the purpose of analyzing every sentence of those passages? What was the point of following those highly complex and strictly formatted essays? AHA. So I can score high on the SAT reading and writing section. I actually thought I had the answer to that question. Little did I know that I was far from the truth.
As a few months of the semester goes by, my teacher suddenly introduces to our class something completely different. Writing personal narratives. I had just learned the name of it. Creative writing. I had thought nothing of it at the moment. I had expected there would be a specific format and careful instructions once again posted on the board. Then I realized there wasn’t. The instructions were minimal and my teacher had strongly encouraged us to write freely. She said it was our time to write about whatever we wanted. She wanted us to take the pressure of writing a formal essay off our shoulders this time.
So I did. I wrote a narrative about a traumatic experience I had as a child. I was stuck in my mom’s car, alone, on a very hot, humid day. I remember as I was writing it, I felt spasms of joy. I felt like I could express my feelings and experiences in a way that I had never done before. My attention was purely focused on one thing. Creating a passionate piece of work. As of now, I don’t look at writing as purely a chore anymore but also as a opportunity for me to express myself in different ways. Now reflecting back on the past, I could finally answer the question this time.
Hi Cynthia, I really liked your post! I could relate to a lot of what you wrote about. I remember having to write an essay about the Outsiders and similar to you not seeing the point of analyzing Johnny Cade. I really liked how you compared it to being “robotic” as if you were programmed. I felt like that too when we would just copy the same format of an essay and I remember feeling like it was too structured and formal. I really liked your 3rd to last paragraph as well when you thought writing was to just get good scores. After using a robotic structure for so long it felt like you just have to follow the rubric and then you’ll get a good score. I remember being kind of shocked and confused the first time teachers introduced creative writing and just said write. I was always left lost at first without the structure that we’ve grown so used to. I agree it’s very freeing to finally be able to express yourself and write about the things you are passionate about through creative writing. I’m glad you’ve found an outlet through creative writing and have found your own purpose for writing