So here you are, a little piece I wrote for my Composition II class about myself and my writing. Perhaps, I'll change what I have here one day, but not to worry, I won't take it completely down. It will move to my blog if it leaves here.
Reminiscing in the Remnants of a Semester
A girl with long brown hair sat cross-legged in the grass underneath the trees. The sun fell upon the notebook balancing on her knees. The pen glided across the page as she let her mind wander. She had learned so much this semester, it seemed, but it had all gone by so fast. Just three months ago, she had entered the classroom with a stack of failed stories in the back of her mind and a fresh notebook in her bag. The teacher was a spunky woman with short hair and a passion for writing: exactly what the girl needed. With high hopes for the semester, she took her description and a stack of "fun words" and dove *tantivy into the essays.
The profile essay had required an interview: she had to talk to people. A light chuckle escaped as she recalled her irrational fear. She had stumbled nervously over her words, and the subject himself had put her fears to rest, adding yet another element of his self to the essay in the process. When she finally had all her information together, she had written pages upon pages of reflecting and musing about the essay, and now it was time to put it all together. Everything else had been difficult too, but this was different. She hadn't the slightest clue what she was doing, and yet, she had managed to pull it off before the due date.
The paper was filled to the brim with simile, metaphor, description, and imagery. Nearly every description of something somehow reflected upon her subject. She couldn't have been more proud of that essay. Her normally repetitive sentence structures had been replaced with multiple re-wordings and she began to incorporate new punctuation she'd never played with before. Her descriptive images began to flow better with her dialogue, and though it wasn't perfect, she was proud of the improvements.
A smile escaped her lips. The words simply flowed better now. They came easier. Their origin was less often from bitterness or regret, and more often from inspiration, or beauty. And though her characters still presided over reality in her writing, she had gained some form of perspective over non-fiction writing. She laughed as she mused to herself; wouldn't it be so much easier if she could just write a profile of everyone she knew? She would know everyone so much better them.
Her mind wandered yet again, this time to her academic writing. Next week was finals week, after all. How silly it had all seemed at first: writing research papers from information someone else already wrote. What was all that nonsense about, anyway? However, the trend paper she had written had helped her to realize why it was so important. Sure, anyone could read articles all day long. Maybe they'd learn a thing or two, but if they couldn't write about it, how well did they really understand it? The importance of those research papers had begun to make sense in her mind.
Her mind slowly returned to the course she was supposed to be writing a paper for. She had often longed for a chance to use her creative writing in her school work, but had never seemed to find the chance. What teacher wanted to read a story written by students who didn't want to do it anyways? Not everyone in every class was always as enthusiastic about words as she was. However, as she deliberated about this, she realized something. She didn't have to have a creative writing assignment in order to be creative. The same description and "fun words" could be used in any paper, so long as she worded it right. Why not write a paper in the form of a story? It would be interesting, and fun to write too. She grinned like a Cheshire cat at the thought of an academic paper, in third person, in a story. As she turned to a fresh page of her notebook, she knew one thing was for certain: the paper she was about to write would be her story.
