Nick Argent 10/2/10
MCHS
How am I going to be happier in education? (HW 2)
School’s a stressful place. Graduating high school right now is my greatest goal. Though I have all the credits I need to graduate, I don’t have the in the right order. I’ve got 12 math credits because I’m terrible at it. I finally passed my math regents with a 66, which I’m happy about. Though now I don’t have a math class, and I still have an SAT to pass, I don’t know what I’m going to do. Not only that, but in order to graduate I also have to pass my oral defense. The oral defense is a two hour presentation on three projects. I only need to take two regents because my school is different. I took a lot of college classes in my junior year, though the problem with that is junior year I only had math and US History classes as high school classes. I’m terrible in both of them. And oral defense only allows upper division projects. I’ve not gotten projects in Italian, or projects back in my other college classes. This is why I’m so stressed out. I need to get through this semester so I’ll have something to present. It’s maddening! But I have to work my ass off this semester. So much is going on right now that I can’t seem to tolerate with. I’ve got this paper to write, a draft on a Hurricane Katrina project coming up for US History, I’m required to read the entire Animal Farm book because there’ll be a test on Monday and I’m losing my mind. This is not making me happy. I’d love to have a mini summer vacation right now just to catch up. I’ve been hearing I’ll have to go to tutoring next week for math in order to pass my SAT. This is all coming down so hard on me. It would make me happy if I wasn’t under all this stress. But I guess I’ll just have to suffer through it to be happy.
Now that I’ve let all that out, I would like to be positive. It would make me extremely happy to pass this class and take creative writing. The kind of writing with structure isn’t my thing. In my world there aren’t any rules in writing, it’s what the reader enjoys. It would make me happy to make them happy in other words. When they read a paper I don’t want them saying “Ugh, another few boring paragraphs I’ve got to read!” I want to be noticed, I want to be the unique writer. I want to be the one with the enjoyable piece to read. I want people to enjoy, not dread, what I write. I believe that instead of structuring things into a perfect unenjoyable essay, you should have the option of letting creativity explode. That’s just my opinion. All that would make me happy as can be, because I love to write. I love writing anything given as a topic to write about. Give me a topic, and I’ll have written a page in a little over 10 minutes. My only depressing complaint is that I got a check minus every time I wrote a paper in the last writing class I took all because of structure. It had nothing to do with creative ideas to help benefits, it was all because I didn’t stay on that boring topic the entire time. It’d make me happy if I could take something like that now. But I’ve got to wait longer.
I’ve got lots to figure out. I don’t know how to do it exactly. But I’m going to try my best! I’ve got so much on my mind that it’s hard to stay happy. It’s a tough world, I just hope that in the end I can stay happy in its conclusion.
I like how you described your own strengths and weakness. and you obviously have the creative ideas there to pursue writing more. if anything take an extra writing class or go to the work shop if you're afraid of that structure issue following you.
ReplyDeleteif anything you should have referenced the video or the reading but otherwise I think it was good.
and dont worry about figuring it out too much, you have some ways to go!
Nick,
ReplyDeleteYou seem to really understand what it is you like about writing and what you can't stand. I feel your pain. In college, I hated having to draw simple things with perfect shading etc when I just wanted to paint in a looser and more exciting way. And now I can paint fast and furious with all that "boring" basic stuff in the background, because I learned it. My paintings are far better for it.
The less - Structure IS important - even in creative writing. Its not the exciting part, its the backbone that helps readers follow the idea. That being said, you need work on structure. Can you be open to learning the basics? When you decide structure is somehow on a different planet from creativity, you set up a false dichotomy. They are related - yin/yang style.
That being said, I bet you can guess what I would comment on......
I meant the "lesson" not the "less" at the opening of paragraph 2.
ReplyDelete