The Transformation from Hating to Enjoying Writing

For a while writing was never my favorite thing, up until 10^th grade I never enjoyed writing because I really never got to write about subjects that interested me. Even though I may have had the freedom to write about what I wanted, my assignments were predominantly restricted around a certain prompt that really didn’t interest me. I don’t have a lot of interests especially back in 9^th grade when all I really talked about was sports and movies. At least now I am just a little bit more cultured but subjects are still my go to areas to write and talk about. 

In the fall of 10^th grade I took a course called “The Times,” going into it I wasn’t really sure what to expect; I obviously knew it was based around the NY Times but I didn’t know what type of work we would do. The class was primarily based around reading and analyzing different articles and trying to write with similar styles. I really enjoyed this class because we were able to write about modern day events/ culture and we were given so much flexibility. Over my next two years I took some of my favorite classes over my high school career. In the fall of my junior year I was able to take one class entitled “Art of the Essay” and in the spring of my senior year I took a class entitled “The Callings.”

 I was a little nervous prior to taking “Art of the Essay” because I figured this class would be all about reading books or essays and evaluating them while writing responses. Even though we often read and evaluated different essays we were able to construct our own essays about whatever we wanted to write about. I loved this class because we were learning a lot about different strategies when constructing essays but still given a giant amount of flexibility when it came to the subject.

Through out the course of the semester I was able to write about the Baltimore Ravens, and the Miami Heat, which included post game write-ups, how I become a fan and some of my favorite memories going to games. I also was able to write about community service work, and some of my favorite movies television shows. I also really enjoyed an assignment where I had a write a review of a documentary. The assignment however, had a little twist; I had to talk about the strengths and weaknesses of the documentary. This was a really interesting assignment because I have never before watched the Miami Heat documentary with the sole intention of watching to point out its flaws. This class provided with me new perspectives on how to write essays and enabled me to look at different pieces with out bias and come into new pieces with an open mind.

During the spring of my senior year when “senioritis” was starting to take over my mindset, I enrolled into a class called the callings.  I absolutely loved this class, even though, going into it I wasn’t too happy to be taking it. The semester before I had given a teacher the idea of a “Sport Literature” class but I was very disappointed when I found out my lottery number was so high I wouldn’t be able to take it. I enrolled in “The Callings” because it seemed like a class I would enjoy, I personally always think about my calling in life and this class seemed right up my alley. Through out this class we watched different movies and read different articles about various characters callings, and we wrote about our own callings. This was an area I thought a lot about but never put my ideas on paper.