Why I still don't write.

Why I still don't write.
Last year around this time I posted an essay I had written called Why I don't write. (That last sentence was a paradox in its entirety.) I wrote the essay for my AP language class. Well, the kids who are taking that AP class this year have been working one the same assignment.  The assignment was to explain why we write or why we don't. It sounds pretty simple. Pretty straightforward. The goal is kind of just to explain your feelings towards the art of writing.

Though simple, the assignment can be personal because it doesn't seem to have a right or wrong answer. Just explain your own feelings. Answer the prompt and do so articulately. It sounds like you can't really fail unless you don't actually try.

Or so I thought.

Sometimes high school students, (well, I assume most high school students, I suppose it could be just only me.) Sometimes high school student do assignments the night before they're due. You know what I'm talking about? The ones where you quickly do the assignment well enough to get the grade, but you don't put a lot of effort into it or make it very personal? Yeah. Those. This essay was not one of those.

This was one of those assignments that you really like. One that you put a lot of effort into. A paper you're proud to hand in, knowing you did a good job and that you created something. It's cool to be proud of your work. It's cool to know that you made a thing and it turned out better than you originally thought. My why I don't write paper was, and still is a paper I'm very proud of.

But I received a very low grade for the assignment.

Many people who have read my essay have been impressed with it. They felt they could relate to the underlying theme of unimportantness. Of feeling that the world is so big and loud with so many others shouting, how and why would anyone listen to me? But they also could relate to my final point. Why does it matter? We're not all going to be famous and well known. But why does it matter? We all know people we care about and who care about us. We matter to them and therefore, what we have to say matters to them. The human experience is more enjoyable when we have the opportunity to intimately care for the people around us. We don't need to be famous in order to matter.

When I received a low score on my paper, I sent the teacher a message explaining how I had followed the rubric. I did not understand how I could've received a failing grade. Just the explanation of how I followed the rubric was more thought out and articulate than the argumentative papers of many high school students. I received a very short email back (one that was full of typos I might add,) asking me to stay after school so my grade could be explained to me. When the teacher explained my grade, she basically said that the amount of sadness in my paper lowered the effectiveness of my following the rubric. She said my paper was much more overwhelmingly sad and that's why I received the grade. She then proceeded to count my paragraphs in front of me. There was only one more sad paragraph than there were happy paragraphs. In someways, she disproved her own reasoning right in front of me. But she still gave me a low grade.

She gave me the opportunity to fix the things she didn't like about it and get a better grade. I hated doing this. I changed it how she told me to and I hated it. The meaning was gone. The paper wasn't something I was proud of anymore. It was conformity. It became what the teacher wanted. I don't think I even saved that version of the paper because I hated it so much. But I turned it in, I got the grade, the teacher won.

I have a friend who did the same assignment this year. I read through his paper, he will get a good grade, I'm positive of it. His essay was very cookie cutter, that teacher will like it. At first he was offended when I said his essay was cookie cutter and that he would get a good grade. He thought I was saying it was unoriginal and therefore not good. He was wrong. His essay was great. His paper was all about how he writes as an escape, to vent and cope with his feelings. He writes because it gives him an opportunity to process and understand the things in his life that he can't control, in order to better manage the things he can control. He loves writing for this reason. Many people do. There is nothing wrong with that. This is absolutely a great reason to write. It's actually my reason for writing this particular post. His essay was great, but it's also exactly what the teacher was looking for. The teacher wants everyone to love writing and see it as therapy.

Because I had a different reason for writing, I failed the assignment. I was told there was no right or wrong way to do the paper, and then I was told that I did it wrong.

And here we see another reason I hate writing. Teachers who have a particular idea of what they want in an assignment and don't want to see anything that doesn't fit what they have in their minds to be perfect. Teachers who see something that is different as something that is wrong.

This is also one of the reasons why kids don't usually try to do their best work in school. They're told that their feelings and opinions are not valid. They're told that because they feel differently than other people that they are a failure.

Why would anyone want to put in the time and effort of creating something wonderful only to be told that the way they are wrong to create it?