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Personally I love to write. I also think it’s cool that we are blogging; it is a good way for people to interact and get to know each other outside of the classroom. I have blogged in a couple of my history classes, but never an English class.
When I was younger I wrote all the time. I actually wanted to be an author for a while; I thought it would be cool for people to read my opinions and experiences. I started to get turned off when I began high school. My teacher was really big on grammar and punctuation. I am not good at either, especially punctuation; I use punctuation right in my mind. I use it the way I talk. Maybe if they were speeches that I was going to read aloud they would make sense to everyone else too.
Although I no longer aspire to be J.K. Rowling, I still believe I write a lot for someone who has been so discouraged. And when I say discouraged I mean it, plenty of my papers have been straight failed, some have been “recommended” to take a stroll in the writing center, and others have zero comment or grade, just a check. Mediocre, not great, but at least it’s not a check minus? I still free write when I chose to, another thing that turned me off was when teachers would say ok now write. Write what? That is obnoxious to me, I want a specific topic. For me even a specific topic I can take the craziest swerve off of, so a free write can end up being a jumble of things that make no sense.
I also hate requirements, if I can get my point across in x many words then why do I have to reach z, I feel like a lot of the times that is why my papers get lower marks. I have to puff them up and the true substance is lowered. Then I feel as though I have put all this time and effort into something that turns into a piece of shit. Then all I get is this was good this was bad. This brings me into my next topic, teachers don’t give enough comments which makes me feel that they assign just to assign. Meaning that no matter how hard I work, or don’t work I won’t ever find out what is good about my paper, what needs a tune up, and how to improve for next time. Never once have I had an English teacher write out, or verbally explain to me why they gave me the grade that they did. I felt that if I was to become a “better writer” they should be the ones to show me how. The only time in High School that I received feedback was from strangers in the writing lab, or my history teacher. Did I not deserve the same attention from my English teacher? I feel that I have not grown since 8th grade, and that probably isn’t an exaggeration. I am waiting for the day when someone will give me positive or negative feedback. The day when I can see annotations that lead me to believe they did read my full paper, and the day when I don’t have to say “I fucking hate my English teacher”.