During my years writing I’ve learned the structure and format of how to construct essays, stories and various write ups for my class work and personal matters. Between each project taken were events and individuals that reflect off of every line used in my script. From personal experience the inspiration comes from some of the past tense of one’s life but more than anything the current time and lifestyle. Everything started from the days of learning how to read and write where I began to form facts into a single string of a story, beginning, middle and end. This led to some of my most frustrating years of beginning to write my own stories and summarize class readings in my black and white notebook to be graded by my teacher. Year after year new challenges arose of various styles of writing were introduced which opened new doors of stating fact and also opportunities of expression. Up until middle school writing wasn’t particularly my strongest of passions and even to this day I always feel I struggle to put words to paper.
Starting school was a very emotional experience for me. My mother basically dragged me through the doors and set me in the middle of the classroom so she had enough time to run out the door to leave. Some days I looked forward to going to class while some days I would kick and scream for her to take me back home to avoid doing work and all the boring books that go along with it. My biggest fear truly was revealing what was within my writing, the fear of another human being picking apart every line trying to find errors and tearing it apart. I was embarrassed to express myself even when the facts were laid out in front of me because being wrong was the end of the world to me. But along the way I grew confidence because I was sharing with teachers I could trust which were essential for me to move forward. My early writings were summaries of individual short stories which soon led to full books. These summaries were restricting the joy of creativity and freedom by only asking about the facts and not allowing the writing party of it to be original. All that ran through my mind was thoughts of rebelling against writing facts that were previously written, I found it to be tedious and repetitive. So for many years I didn’t take my English or history classes serious when it came to paper’s by putting them off, lacking stern effort or simply not doing them. From the fifth grade to my freshman year I basically did half the work with half the effort putting me in major hole in my life. My teachers were boring plus the subjects of the papers were on books that didn’t interest me making each project painful to get through.
When high school started things started to turn around for me once I met my English teacher, Ms. Daykun. The class started out with interesting events in which gave me a head start for the year to come. This was the year I was excited to write and learn about various English topics, even though this same year was where we started William Shakespeare, which everyone I knew dreaded to go through. But I took an interest into it so every class I would participate and every paper I would get involved with more closely helping me tune up my writing skills. Following my freshman year I had the same teacher again to assist me on all my writing in or out of her class as long as I stayed after school. The support helped tremendously enormously to let me express my own feelings of topics and sometimes my own personal ideas.
The second half of my high school years were challenging to me because we began doing major research papers that were much longer in length that needed many citations and sources. No longer did we do any creative writing of sorts but opened books and searched the web for various areas of useful information to take to put into our own words for grading. Our teachers were preparing us for yet another leap into a whole new world of academic achievements on another level. College was right around the corner so choices needed to be made and the pressure was on all the students and everything felt tense. Unfortunately, I don’t have any of the works I did from high school with me at school because of the fact I never had this lap top until I graduated so I can’t fully reflect on anything I wrote from that long ago. But I took a step in between secondary school and college at Bridgton Academy in Bridgton, Maine.
Bridgton Academy was a school that only took seniors and graduates of high school into their school. Our class size was one hundred seventy five student athletes scattered in a minor college environment of dormitories on a hill. The academy is “The Year That Makes A Difference,” and its intentions was to help young men to move forward academically and athletically into the schools of their choices. Each student is motivated by separate goals with completely different backgrounds from all over the country. My purpose and motivation was to become a better scholar and find a better way to manage my time with academic success. Lucky for me not only did I spend a lot of time on the ice with my coach but he also ended up being my English teacher for the year. Coach Michael Meserve was very influential in just about everything I did on campus in Bridgton, he gave me new things to write about that were new to me academically while also making them enjoyable to go through the process of learning the fresh techniques. But even beyond the material he was an outstanding and interesting guy. Graduating from Norwich College where he was a cadet that moved on to bigger things in the Army that forced him to go overseas during our nation’s conflicts. He motivated me to do bigger and better things on and off the ice by leading by example.
Some of the works I did during my year at Bridgton were poetry, research papers, story writing and even writing my own eulogy, which was by far the most interesting piece of work I have ever done. The project forced me to see myself as an individual from the outside in so I could imagine what people will think of me when I eventually pass away. So I looked into my own future of how I imagined my life to be years from now and it amazed me after writing the eulogy how conceited it sounded to write about myself in such a high standard. The opening line, “Ryan Dooley, a man who lived a truly meant a lot to his family, peers, wife and his community,” made me wonder if any of that would be true by the time I pass away since time has changed and life moves along so rapidly away from us. The part I questioned the most from any of this was the community part because I don’t feel as though after college the meaning of the word changes. For a hand full of years it was a number of classmates until we move forward to another part of life. So from that moment on I had a new outlook on how I talked about myself and others and really tried to reflect on how I set forward my views.
But the eulogy was only my first assignment of the course and this led to more exciting reading and writing. The class discussed such things as the assassination of Kennedy and the whole magic bullet conspiracy breaking down all the facts like who was there, areas of interest and the entire route of the automobile. After all of this discussion we needed to conduct an interview with Lee Harvey Oswald to ask him about his background and sort out whether or not he was the shooter of JFK. After moving onto watching Hannibal Lector in “Silence of the Lamb”, was a research project of notorious serial killers and the studying of their psychiatric problems that arose as they grew up from a young age. I was assigned “The BTK Strangler” or better known as Dennis Rader of Kansas. For the entire month of February I was forced to look into his entire life and his potential nine murders of families and innocent victims. As disturbing as it all was I did learn a lot about the psychology behind studying the clinically insane and basic concepts of how it tends to start. But of all the different pieces of work I did my favorite was the deserted island project.
In the beginning of the year Coach Meserve wanted to get to know about how we wrote and the way we put together ideas so he had us get involved in a small project. For homework we all had to make a list of ten things we would have with us if we ever were left on an island alone and with this we were going to write a story of how these things would keep us alive. The catch was we couldn’t use our list and we were forced to exchange with people around the room. Our limitations were there was no means of communication to the outside world with electronics and at the end of the story we had to decide whether or not the person in the story would survive or not. For this he wasn’t entirely concerned with the grammar and punctuation but more so the creative thinking and story line.
Although most of my writing and influence was derived from with the walls of my academic classrooms no one inspired my writing more than my own mother. She was a graduate in English and substitutes as a high school teacher. For many years my mother would write something special to me and my brothers and leave it in our rooms for us to find. She was an outstanding writer that moved me with what she wrote. This inspired me to do my own writing for her so every Christmas I write her a poem within my Christmas card so she has something to read each year. It has come to the point where she doesn’t want a materialistic gift, she only wants a card and her family around.
In conclusion to this essay I want to improve my writing skills and make it more of a habit to construct my papers and even personal works on my own in a fashion that not only makes sense but I can be satisfied with. Although I am not always the best writer I know there is plenty of potential behind me to become an excellent writer as long as I can effectively use transitions to help move along with the point I am trying to get across. I’m looking forward to practicing and being challenged to write with my peers.
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