WP4: Learning to appreciate Writing

Throughout my academic experience writing has always been my dependable strength. Even when my other classes were going terribly I could always count on writing to not only pull me through academically but emotionally as well. For a very long time, my success in writing was the only validation I received at school and it became a prominent part of my personal identity. I used this “identity” as a coping mechanism to deal with the inadequacy I was feeling in school overall, but it created a dependency on writing and English that slowly sucked the joy out of it. By the time I escaped from HS I had no interest in writing at all.

When I took a year off between high school and college I did very little writing, if any at all. I remember that I wrote a couple of song lyrics during quarantine, but I didn’t journal or do any type of creative writing as I used to when I was younger. Instead, I focused on my other academic interests and grew those, and I slowly started to drift away from my association with writing = pressure and academic success. This was the first step to mending my relationship with writing, but this class helped me progress even more.

While last year was spent finding time apart, I feel like my time in this class has helped me rekindle my romance with writing, without the confines and expectations that I had held onto for years. Truthfully, I think the last time I enjoyed writing this much was when I was writing stories about mermaids in first grade. I feel like writ 150 not only gave me a chance to write about things I’m genuinely interested in again but the discussions we had also prompted me to dig deeper into ideas that I had thought I understood, when in reality there is so much more to perceive. This class gave me the invaluable opportunity to actually analyze my intellectual history and path and my overall relationship with academia, and gave me the freedom to actually write like a person instead of just a “student”.

For the first time ever in a writing class, I was asked to write about myself and MY perspectives, experiences, and ideas. At first, it was very daunting because it felt so unfamiliar. I remember reading the prompt for WP1 and being like

“wait…. Huh?” Just the idea of writing about myself was so foreign that I had to do mental digging before I could even write in order to bring real ideas to the surface. But, as I worked on the emotional excavation I found that the intention behind my writing became clearer and more purposeful, and by devoting time to thinking about and working to articulate feelings that I had been hurt by, I have been able to make tremendous strides in improving myself. The writing experience became very therapeutic; I began an internal conversation with myself about feelings of inadequacy and insecurity that had been fostered in school and then started working to dismantle them. This in turn allowed me to access my real feelings and let me re-examine my autobiography through a new grown-up perspective. This concept of “realness” has also helped me better understand what it means to bring authenticity to your writing, and I think my artistic voice has been strengthened overall because I have had a real opportunity to learn about myself in a more intentional way.

I think the most important lesson comes down to being intentional with what we do, which is something I’ve come to understand a lot better over the course of this class. I really had trouble in the beginning because I wasn’t asking “why” often enough, because I wasn’t approaching my writing with the intention to dig deeper than I normally would. However, as this class progressed and I began to understand the style of writing that was necessary to actually dig in I think I became more able to articulate thoughtful ideas better. I realized that I couldn’t fake the growth or evolution of my ideas that I wanted to portray, so in turn, I realized that I wouldn’t be able to write and analyze with intention if I kept pushing back against myself and growth.

It was like a game of tug a war at first, but as the class progressed I grew to feel more comfortable with the concept of learning more about myself. On projects like Wp2 and WP3, I feel like I reached an area of stasis with myself that I hadn’t felt in a super long time, because this writing path really walked me along the journey of self-acceptance and understanding in a healing way. By opening up a space for students to reflect on themselves, I think the writing projects provided the most meaningful opportunities this year to get to know the nuances of ourselves better, which is ultimately helping me appreciate school more. Since the requirements for a narrative were so open-ended and personal it really forced me to examine areas that had been neglected and bring them to the forefront so I could repair them. I think it would have taken me much longer to start the path towards academic healing if I hadn’t chosen this class.

While these writing projects have helped me open up emotionally they have also helped me redefine my view of writing as a tool rather than a real facet of my identity. I love writing, but my whole sense of self doesn't need to be built off of writing A+ papers all the time. These projects gave me freedom and space to articulate ideas that I had never put into words before, even though those ideas seemed to shape everything I did. I realized how powerful writing can be when you reclaim it as a form of expression and art for yourself instead of the way it is often taught to us in school. When you’re young it feels like everything you do is important all the time and that everything is going to impact your future, and it made me so afraid to “fail”. But my experience in this class has shown me that sometimes writing in order to understand your own thoughts and feelings can be more important than getting a perfect essay grade. The revisions helped me see that it doesn’t have to feel so dire when you’re writing because ultimately you can go back at some point with a different headspace and change things.

I used to feel like every essay was either the end of the world or the greatest victory, but the way we approached writing in this class has dramatically reframed my relationship and has taught me to be more forgiving with myself and my art. Where I once saw writing only as a tool to raise grades and self-esteem, I can now appreciate it as an extension of myself that is loving and gentle, rather than gold and exacting. I think the most important thing I have learned this year overall, is that writing doesn’t need to act as a crutch or a mask for hiding what you actually are, writing serves as the opposite and helps us expose ourselves so we can grow and reflect.