For years a rush of disappointment would wash over me every time I was handed back a paper. The same thing was always scribbled in bright ink all over the black and white pages. Fragments, comma misuse, grammar. These were common errors among my class though, so my teachers were never overly-concerned about my writing. I never understood how to fix these so-called errors, so I would go though the same god awful ritual every time corrections were due. I would haul myself out of bed at the crack of dawn, drive to school and try for the life of me not to argue too much with my teacher. Eventually, I stopped trying to show my voice through my writing. I took on the generic "student voice", and immediately started receiving A's in writing.
If something doesn't flow naturally while I'm writing, or I'm unsure about a comma or fragment, I say it out loud. If the extra pause the comma adds gives the reader a better idea of the emotion I'm trying to portray, I'll add it. If it doesn't, I move on. Writing in that simple way gives the piece much more voice. Plain and simple: it sounds better. Up until recently, I got rid of that habit. I followed all of the rules and regulations of writing a paper or an essay. That got me through middle school, but in my Freshman year of Academy, things took a turn.
Mr. Morgan was our English teacher last year. He would give me B's on my papers with a "Good job" written in green pen on the top. But looking at the rubric, Voice and Image were always the categories where points were lost. I didn't think anything of it and I tried to make sure I really was following all of the rules. Eventually, a paper came along that I had very strong opinions about. I wrote the paper in the words I would have used if I had been talking directly to Mr. Morgan. That assignment had A written in his infamous green ink on the top. I knew from then on that the Academy would let me be me. I was finally allowed to write like I think.
I really like the idea that some classes encourage writing with one’s own voice, rather than using the generic “student voice.” It’s good to see that you earned a better grade when writing how you really felt and with the voice you would really use if talking to the reader. This makes me think that I don’t have to satisfy every essay to a rubric, but rather to my own satisfaction, in terms of content and tone. I see this as a new approach many of us can try to take when writing, to not attempt to fit in any sort of mold, but be willing to take risks with sentence structure and word choice and see how it pays off in the end. With these ideas in mind, I find myself more willing to write like I speak, while also writing sentences with pauses that mean something. I’m excited to continue writing the way I think by documenting my thought process on paper.
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