Me as a Writer

I look to my right, then to my left to see no one is watching. I hold my breath as I sneak the slip of paper behind my back to my friend sitting behind me. I know what the consequence is if I get caught. As the paper almost reaches its destination I hear the teacher shout out my name across the room. Immediately everyone turns to stare at me. My heart drops and my fear stricken body becomes unable to move. The teacher marches over and holds out her hand. “You know the rules,” she says to me and she taps her foot quickly. I duck my head and hand her the paper. She marches back up to the front of the room and clears her throat. Then she begins to read my note aloud for the whole class to hear about how I thought the boy I was crushing on looked so cute that day. With everyone looking at me and laughing, I sink down into my seat as low as my third grade body can go as I take my cruel punishment. From that day I on I promised myself I would never pass another note again, or at least I wouldn’t get caught.

All through elementary I was the best note passer there was! I passed notes all the time, but before I learned my conniving note passing ways, I learned to write. I’ve been writing for almost as long as I can remember, but where did it all begin? In the first grade I had Mrs. Nelson and that is the furthest back I can remember writing. I remember writing letters over and over and sounding out words. This was the first time I remember having a vocabulary test. We’d spend a lot of time sounding out words and putting them into stories. As the years went on I became better and better at writing.

In the fifth grade we wrote a lot of short stories. We would come to class each morning and had a paper that had the beginning line of how our story would start. After we finished writing some of us would go up to the front of the class and share. It was fun to hear all of the different stories that came out of the same first line.

As I grew older the papers I wrote were no longer short stories. They were experience papers, poems, essays, research papers, etc. Writing was no longer very fun for me until I had Mrs. Card. She put the joy back into writing. We got to write a lot of papers about our own life experiences. Some were funny experiences and some were more serious. I looked forward to writing assignments in her class. Then cam the poems… we wrote poem after poem, after poem! Towards the end of that assignment I was all rhymed out and I wrote my very first non-rhyming poems. I remember Mrs. Card having a wall where she hung her favorite papers. Mine were often up there which made me feel confident in my writing.

Going into my sophomore year I was pretty confident about my writing. The first paper I wrote in my English class I took a lot of time on. I made sure everything was perfect so I could make a good impression on my new teacher. I got the paper back and couldn’t believe it. There were red marks everywhere! My confidence was shattered and remained shattered for the remainder of the year.

Since Wakefield’s class I’ve been feeling good about writing again and I came to realize Mrs. Wakefield’s harsh criticism made me a better writer. I have a joy for writing. It’s how I vent and share my feeling. Although, I’m not very committed to my writing outside of school I do enjoy doing it. Writing has been with me for almost as long as I can remember and through the good and the bad experiences I’ve always had a love for it.