Writing Voice

I think my writing voice is something I just discovered throughout this course, at least when it comes to inputting my voice into academic writing assignments. I have always been told by teachers that I am a good writer, but I never enjoyed writing for school.

Throughout middle school, I'd find myself writing witty poems about just about anything, and as I progressed into high school, I realized that writing was very cathartic for me. I began to journal at the end of each day just as a way to process what had happened. Writing became a way for me to uncover what was really going on inside my head, and to recognize any problems in my thinking before they became a larger issue to tackle.

However, all that time, I still hated writing for school. Teachers would encourage me to write more because they enjoyed my pieces, but I just was not motivated. Since being in this class, though, I have discovered that I enjoy writing when I can write about what I care about. This class has given me the opportunity to insert my passions and my thoughts into just about every writing assignment we have had, and that opportunity has made writing not only easy, but enjoyable for me.

For one of the first times I can remember, I found myself painstakingly revising and revising my memoir because I felt so connected to that piece; I cared so deeply about it that the time constraints I were working under were more of a challenge than a looming deadline. I have wanted to refine my pieces as best I could before the deadline, instead of forcing myself to crank out the minimum requirement before the paper is due.

In all of this, I have found my writing voice is really just my heart. My writing is just another way for you to get to know me. If I ever do find myself teaching English to students, I would hope that I could empower them to write about what they care about and uncover their own voice.

Reflection on Writing

For the sake of this blog post, I am going to reflect on my memoir that I wrote on Bekah Griffin. I'm choosing to reflect on this piece because it was the one I most enjoyed throughout the course of this class, but I also think I had more difficulty writing it because it was a subject that I cared so genuinely about, and I did not want to get it wrong.

When I was deciding on a subject for my memoir, I sifted through a lot of people that I admired, but I ultimately landed on Bekah because I immediately knew the one aspect of her personality that I wanted to capture--her passion. Not only did I want my writing to convey her passion that touched my life in such a tangible way, but I also wanted the excuse to pick her mind more about how she got to be the way that she is today.

I hit extreme writers' block when writing this memoir, though, and I realized it was because I so badly wanted to convey all that Bekah is, but I felt like words fell short. So, after some encouragement from a peer review, I realized that less may be more in the way that I attempted to describe her passion but with a hesitancy that I knew I could not do her justice.

Honestly, when I was finished writing this, I was pretty proud of it. I felt like it showed a shift in my writing from being just words to how the writing in itself can convey my message alongside the words. I felt like I had accomplished a seemingly-impossible task--giving people a taste of Bekah without ever seeing her face or meeting her personally. She is a hard person to summarize in just a few pages, but I think the focus on her passion allowed her warm and engaging personality shine through the words. I hope my readers would agree.

High School --> College

In my experience with the realm of education, the transition from high school to college has been emphasized in the most dramatic and kind of scary ways. When I graduated high school, I think I took the hardest aspects of college that I had heard and that guided my framework for how college was going to be. I was petrified that only three tests a semester would make my grade, and socially, I was worried that I would be surrounded by a bunch of alcoholics. But as is the case with most warnings, those tidbits of advice were over-generalizations. In the summer before my freshman year of college, I found myself more worrying about how to combat these over-generalizations I had received than to practically think about the life change I was about to embark on.

I think the most effective way to prepare our students for college is to teach them to recognize their passions. I wish I had gone into college knowing more about who I was and who I wanted to be, rather than worrying about the academic aspect or other people's social choices. If my teachers had helped me develop that confidence in myself, I don't think I would have been as worried as I was.

Yes, the academic rigor will probably increase in college, but I think, in most cases, that is one of the more minor changes. Why don't we prepare our students to stay true to who they are and on the path to who they want to be as they leave for this new stage of life?

Feeling Overlooked

I think that my passion for people who are overlooked began in high school when I felt isolated in my problems. High school is a time where many people are struggling to find their identity, but it is also a coming-of-age time, where many people are beginning to form opinions and passions of their own.

In the midst of the problems I struggled with, especially my struggles with depression, I felt as if my problems were overlooked or dismissed for not being serious enough. If I did have something I felt like I could contribute, I felt like my opinion was hushed or pushed aside as irrelevant.

I remember the moment I decided that I wanted to dedicate my life to helping those who feel overlooked feel seen and heard. This instance was probably more the climax to a bunch of little interactions that led me to so firmly choose to devote my life to this area, but it seemed like a rather large deal to me in the moment.

I was sitting at church with my parents, and one of the elders came up to conduct a vote with the congregation on a new pastor they were looking to hire. I remember being 17, pretty passionate about my faith, and ready to have a say in who was going to be the face of my church. They passed out the ballots, and I circled my response to whether or not I liked the guy, and then the elder said something that shattered my world: “If you are 18 or over and a member of this church, please turn your vote in to be counted.”

I remember being livid after this church service. I understood the need to protect the integrity of the voting process, but I was a member of that church who was probably living out my faith more passionately than some of the adults there. I wanted a say, especially since that church had taught me to raise my voice even when I felt unable to because of my age.

In that small, small instance, I knew that I had to leverage my life to help those who are overlooked feel understood. Too many instances in my life have I felt the pain and the shame of being disregarded, and I do not want anyone to float through this life feeling like their voice or their problems are irrelevant.