Robyn Harvey
10/20/15
Personal
Narrative
The first time I ever really began to
like writing was in second grade. Throughout the year my teacher would give us
assignments to write our own short stories, and to include our own little hand
drawn pictures. Every time she passed back our graded story’s I would get
around 100% and a smiley face sticker or words of encouragement like “Great
story! Keep up the good work.” I especially loved showing my stories off to my
family as they praised me and said how cute it was that I was a little writer. Writing
was the perfect way for me to express myself ate such a young age. I loved
being able to share a little bit of my life through the stories I created.
In fourth grade we got a little more in
depth by writing book predictions, summaries, and things of that nature. These
were my specialty because I knew exactly how to write them in order to get a
perfect score. Short stories and small book analysis’s became the extent of my
writing knowledge. As my time in elementary school progressed, I kept up the
good grades, became a very well rounded student, and my writing had never
been better!
By the time 6th grade
rolled around, I was enrolled in all of your average middle school courses. I
was a straight “A” student taking accelerated math, although English was one of
my easiest subjects. Halfway through the school year I got a call from my
history teacher asking if I was interested in joining her advanced placement
English and History class. I couldn’t believe I was actually being asked to
join the advanced class! Isn’t that only for the really smart kids? At first I
was hesitant but then I was really excited to be joining a class where I could
reach my full potential. Also, two of my best friends were switching classes at
the same time which made it even better.
The next Monday I walked into my new
class with my best friends to see the fresh new faces and curriculum awaiting
us. After being welcomed by a few friends and familiar students, we took our
assigned seats. My teacher was a loud woman of above average height and dark
brown hair that scattered across her forehead in the form of bangs. She began
with telling us about our first writing assignment of the semester. We were to
write a book report on any of the books she had picked out for us and follow
her guidelines in the packet she handed out. As the class went on I learned her
teaching methods often included yelling important phrases that she didn’t want
us to forget. When she was giving us advice for our book report, she
enthusiastically banged a chair on her desk while yelling “Don’t switch
tenses!” These kind of crazy things are what make her so memorable to this day.
After reading the guidelines for our
assignment, I was getting a little worried. “I’ve never written anything with
this much structure and requirements!” I thought. “There’s no way I’m going to
get through this on my own, I’ve never seen anything like it before.” Then she
said it. The words that sounded so crazy coming out of my teachers mouth that I
wondered if she was going insane. “This is an advanced class so you all should
be writing at a college level! Yeah, that’s right, this is a college level
paper but I expect you are all capable of achieving the requirements.” I could
barely hold what I was thinking inside. “College?! I’ve only gotten half way
through the sixth grade and she expects college level work out of me? Now I’m
officially doomed.”
The next week, I finally sat down
and attempted to start my paper. I read the example paper over and over but
still had no clue how to go about writing my own. As usual I asked my mom for
help. She was pretty good at helping me but I still just didn’t understand the
main concepts that I needed to summarize in each paragraph. I was never taught
how to write a paper like this on my own so figuring out how to collect my
thoughts and write them down in the correct manner was a real struggle for me.
As I went along the writing process for this paper my mom would walk me through
each paragraph and help me express my thoughts neatly. After a painfully long
period of working on my book report I finally finished and turned it in hoping
for the best.
A few weeks later my teacher handed
back our papers and I could barely look. I shook in my boots as I turned the
paper over to see my final scores. A solid “B” not bad! However, I was still
disappointed in myself because I knew I could never have done my paper
correctly, or gotten such a good grade without my mom’s help. I felt like I was
failing myself because I was sustaining such good grades and writing so well
for so long and then suddenly I was struggling to support myself.
As time went on I stopped asking my
mom for help with any kind of paper and started doing them on my own hoping
that I would learn something. It was difficult and ever since then that year
I’ve been getting less than desirable grades on my papers. But I had to learn
on my own that writing is just a weakness of mine and I have to work
harder at it than some other kids. It is mostly difficult for me to wrap my
head around certain formats or structures of specific papers. Expressing my
thoughts in specific ways can be a challenge especially when most teachers
grade a little bit differently and not all of them are going to like my
writing.
After my sixth grade year I began to
really dislike writing mostly because it’s hard to like something I’m not good
at. I’m sure most people could say the same! It seems like every year I try to
write as well as I can and follow the correct guidelines but very little
improvement is made. Despite my growing distaste for writing assignments, I
continue to try my best and hope that one day I’ll be able to write as well as
I once could.
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