Throughout high school, I remember writing an abundant amount of essays. Each year, I wrote at least two essays, one being a required research paper as our English final. Normally, writing essays stresses me out. I intently focus on the deadlines, the grammar, what the teacher wants, and whether the paper is in MLA format rather than engage with the topic that I am forced to write about. For every year during high school, I can recall a paper that did not strike my interest and heightened my anxiety on making it sound professional and looked polished.
However, writing during high school included some lighter memories. During my junior year, my final research paper had to be about a particularly well-known myth and then I had to “debunk” it. This meant that I had to break down pieces of the particular myth, explain the likely reasons why people believed in the myth, and then provide evidence to correct the details of the myth. My paper focused on feminism: why people discredit the term and therefore shy away from anyone who identifies themselves as a feminist. The research itself was fascinating to me. I remember encountering a survey asking why people do not consider themselves a feminist and 43% said that they simply did not like how the word sounded. That seemed ridiculous to me because it demonstrated how people are not actually informed about the beliefs behind a feminist and will instantly disregard the community that simply wants to fight for gender equality rights.
The research was the easy part because it was about a topic I was genuinely passionate about. Writing the essay, however? Not so much. During my junior year, I was in AP English Language, a course solely based on how to improve your writing. Before this class, I failed to acknowledge the importance of simple, yet powerful components of writing, such as prose and sentence structure. While writing the paper, I still struggled to format it in a manner that would appeal to my teacher. There were multiple opportunities for corrections in class, such as peer edits and feedback from my teacher, but my essay still seemed weaker than my peers’ papers. It was discouraging because I dedicated so much time trying to improve my writing but my hand never seemed to connect with the pen and paper. I constantly reviewed my paper, finding any way to improve the block of text in front of me, until 2 weeks later, the final draft deadline approached. I received a B on the paper, which honestly turned out better than I anticipated. This assignment, along with the course itself, helped me realize that there are many important components to writing that I did not notice before. My appreciation for the art of writing and admiration for people who can manipulate it so beautifully to tell their story dramatically increased; however, it is probably in my best interest to stick with reading the words rather than creating them.
