Most people remember a significant event in their life that changed them. In this case we're talking about a literary event. I don't. I remember liking teachers in school. I remember different teachers who I connected with, but I don't remember any English teachers who affected me.
English has never been my strong suit. I've always been good with the reading part. I can comprehend what I've read, and I read a lot. It's the writing part that I struggle with. Even when I think I'm getting the hang of it, I have yet another teacher tell me I'm doing something wrong. It started in fifth grade with commas, I'm still not sure I correctly use them. In middle school I wasn't using enough dialogue. In high school we didn't write a lot, but I didn't have many complaints. When I got to college I thought I had finally gotten the hang of it, but then my ENG 102 professor told me the truth. I had made it to college without even knowing how to write a thesis. Any time I get an assignment to write a paper, I struggle to write it in an academic way.
I have had professors and teachers tell me they like my writing but when the next one contradicts the previous, I find it hard to believe. Writing is a struggle, but I will continue to work on it until I get my literary event.
Maybe you're being too hard on yourself - I'd suspect you've had lots of transformative literacy events. You don't have to limit yourself to English, of course; some people point to very different subjects as important to their reading or writing or public speaking lives. And, just like I said at your table in class today, there's a lot to focus on with writing other than commas and things like that (though when punctuation really matters, like in "Girl," it can make a big difference to the way writing works. And you don't even have to limit yourself to school - lots of readers became readers not because of books they read in class but because of stuff they read outside of school. I still have every copy of the Hardy Boys series: I read them all so many times and never was a single one assigned in school.
ReplyDelete