I Need to Find a Place Where I Can Breathe...

I should probably take the time to mention that the titles of all of my blog posts are all song lyrics. Some relate to what I am thinking about and others are just parts of the songs stuck in my head.

So as usual, I am writing here to take a little time to myself while I push off other work that needs to get done. Today, I have to write a paper. I was thinking about where I would write this paper when I realized how much times change when you get older. I have a five to seven page paper due tomorrow. I am not worried and have no doubt in my mind that I will be able to finish it and have it not be the worst thing that I have ever written. One of my favorites? Probably not, but it won't be horrible.

When I was younger and things had to be typed, that was the hardest part for me. I could hand write a page but then the typing was like torture. This was back when rough drafts were written on paper and the final drafts were typed. That was also the formula, one rough draft, one final draft and that is it. You only edited the rough draft to make it the final draft. But back the typing. My mom used to type my papers, but not like other parents that typed the whole paper and would make corrections as they went, no, my mother typed in all of my grammatical and spelling errors so that I would have to learn to correct them.

In the years that followed as I learned to type my own papers, I discovered that each version was different from the others, not just in the grammar but in the way that I wanted to express myself. I realized that each time I sat down to write left me in a different mind frame than every other time. It still tends to be fairly obvious to see that I have stopped working on a paper for a while and then come back to it because the writing is more strained. I could start working on this paper and with the twenty minutes I have right now but the reality is that I will end up rewriting everything I had so it's not worth it. There are countless drafts that started out as one thing and became something different entirely as I gave myself time to think about exactly what I wanted to say and gave myself some idea of the contents of the paper.

I was also never one of this kids who could write off an outline. That was miserable. Making outlines for things that were already written, fine but trying to use them to guide what I wanted to say was impossible and any good essay I ever wrote was never off an outline. Writing is something that requires mechanics and creativity, but early on, we get the mechanics and it's time to just work the creativity, especially in thinking for yourself while analyzing.

The expectations of us changed all the time throughout our schooling. We went from being worried about our spelling and trying to just write a few sentences, to trying to write a whole page skipping lines in cursive to now, where we think about five-ish pages being no big deal. When did this happen?

My seventh grade English teacher may have been the only one to push us with us actually realizing that he was making our writing better. From my class of thirty, he gave about ten of us a separate project. This was a project more like the ones that I have now in college. It was a fairly open ended prompt about xenophobia. It was supposed to be ten pages long. Granted, at that time, we had a few weeks to do this rather then the days we have to do the same type of paper now, but I remember struggling to understand what he wanted from me since it wasn't spelled out exactly but with time, I realize that that forced me to be a better writer. It was a constant battle after that with every English teacher being different, some helped the creative part and wanted us to learn for ourselves. Others were very specific in what they wanted and grades reflected sticking to that.

So, I would love to keep talking about this but alas, I must go and take care of some things before I start my paper.

I Can Take Most Anything

So I have been lacking on the updates lately but I guess I just haven't had anything really good to say lately. Right now, I am using this post to push off studying for my test tomorrow for a little while but it's all good since I worked ahead in my other classes over break to make this week easier. I guess we do learn more from past experiences. Last spring break, I remember coming back from Spring Break and feeling swamped but this year I did more work than I would have liked over break but I am back and more relaxed than I expected to be. I'm glad that I used all the travel time to get ahead. Plus, it gave me time to actually think my homework all the way through. I always have to really think though my reading responses, but this week felt different since I had hours and hours between reading the prompt and then actually writing rather then prompt only being release the day before I have to write the response and not having the time to ponder. So today, the post was a little short, but as I said, I still have a test tomorrow.