BA 11

What did I learn this semester?

I learned that after ten years of not being in school, there is a lot that I don’t remember about it. When I was in high school it all seemed so easy. I never really tried in high school and I seemed to do well enough. School back then was more a social event then a learning event. My favorite classes were math and ceramics. Why? I didn’t really have to try in either of those classes. I just showed up and did well. I had friends with me in ceramics, and math everyone knew me as the kid to get answers from. I hated English. Sorry, that was an understatement. I really hated English. In fact I hated English so much, I just didn’t go. And for that I still need half an English credit to get my high school diploma. But that is then and this is now. I have learned that if I like what I am writing about, I like to write about it. I have horrible grammar, and my spelling skills are also on the bad side. But I read well, and type on the average to good skill level. I learned that my writing style doesn’t really go by a standard set of rules. I can’t write anything at all, until BAM! it is in my head and then it just comes out. Then it is just some refinement, not really revision.

Core classes were not really my strong point in high school, except for math. I was an “elective credits” kind of guy. I do remember my English classes, and how much I hated them. I think they were my least attended class of my high school career. Reading never really appealed to me until my early twenties; it was then that reading for fun became one of my favorite activities. Now that I am back in school I realize how much I took for granted in high school. The effort I put into a single assignment now leaves me wasted and drained. Ten years ago, I could throw an assignment together in a night. Back then I little care for how well I did. Everything came to me so easily that I felt I never really needed to try to do well. Today I do care how well I do and I try hard to make it show in my work.

I have been a long time out of school, a little over ten years now. In those years I lost a lot of the things that I took for granted. I remember being able to just have one look at a note card or book, and being able to recall it a week later on the quiz or test. This was standard procedure. That was the norm for most of my classes, except for English. English was the class I could genuinely call my bane. If it wasn’t for my loving mother, I would never have made it through any of those banes. Now, ten years later, I am in another English class. Unlike all the classes before it, in this class I actually care how I do. This change in mind set, from not caring to caring, has made all the difference in how I view this subject. This year I have learned that if you care how you do, and you actually like what you are doing, you do it well.

I never really liked English as a subject. I mean, I speak it well enough, and I can read it well enough that I don’t get lost when reading directions. So why should I have to learn to write it? This year has opened my eyes to why it is important to be able to write well. Before this year I have never liked to write and, therefore, I have never written well. Our class had writing assignments that I didn’t really enjoy, and it also had assignments that I really did enjoy. By having these two types of tasks, the enjoyable and not enjoyable, I learned that if you like what you are writing about, you write it well. I liked a few of the assignments this semester, and the quality of work on those assignments showed. This was the first semester that I have ever been complimented on a piece of my writing. That compliment means a lot to me.

This semester in English I think that I really have done well. Even though there were writing assignments that I didn’t really like, I still tried my hardest on them, and I did reasonably well on them. There were also the assignments that I really liked. These assignments opened my eyes on how much just liking something makes you do it better. With my eyes opened, I wrote a piece that was a first for me. I really enjoyed writing “Painful Looks.” Through that enjoyment my ability to write came out, and it was something that I never thought I could do. I have never been complimented on a paper, note, poem or anything else that I have ever written. The compliments I received about that paper made me feel good. And in feeling good, I have had a thought: maybe writing isn’t as bad as I thought.

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