When I first learned how to write, I strung fat and ugly letters to make words, words to make simple sentences, sentences to make three-sentences paragraphs, and paragraphs to make short narratives about my summer vacation or hero.
I wrote some crappy stuff as a seven-year-old, but it didn’t matter how big the words I used were or if I spelled “sweater” right because writing was fun. I loved concocting some crazy story about pickles invading my second-grade classroom or vividly recounting what I did with my mom in Buena Park. I was a kid with a wild imagination and big-brain energy, so I seized every opportunity to spill my thoughts onto paper and make sense of them.
Writing became a bit more serious in third grade. My teacher had us peer review the first narrative we wrote that year. We filled out a rubric by ourselves as we judged each other’s essays based on content, organization, conventions, and mechanics on a scale of 1 to 4, 1 being “needs improvement” and 4 being “exceeds standards.”
“Make sure you fill out the rubric based on how well they did this,” my teacher said as she pointed to the board with the standards of the rubric in nine-year-old language. “If they didn’t do what the rubric asked for, then that means you can’t give them a 4.”
Peer reviewing wasn’t new, but this was the first time that most of us had ever used a rubric. The peer-reviewing we were used to was reading our essays with each other and having face-to-face discussions on what we thought. But the way my teacher made us peer review, there was no, “This part made me laugh, but this part was a little boring, so I think you could do this and make it way cooler.” There was only 1 to 4, “needs improvement” or “exceeds standards”, “unsatisfactory” or “satisfactory.”
Rubrics took away conversations and live feedback and instead gave us a set of guidelines and expectations that not all of us fully understood. It didn’t matter if the essay you were reading made you feel something or taught you something. What mattered was how well the writer mastered the standards, meaning they fulfilled exactly what was asked on the rubric.
It sucked big time. I didn’t like being handed back a piece of paper with some numbers on it. I didn’t know what the other person thought because there was a tiny box that could fit half a comment, and that was only if you could write small. (What kind of third-grader writes small?) There was no discussion either, so I had to go off of my 3 or “met standards” in mechanics when I revised my narrative. But was I supposed to revise when my peer-reviewer couldn’t write me a note on what was wrong with my grammar?
What was worse for me was how the numbers made me feel. Other kids got 4’s in mechanics, some got 4’s all across their final rubric from our teacher. That meant they hit the standards, so I thought that also meant they wrote better than I did. Since I never “exceeded” all of the standards, I thought I was a bad writer. Other kids had that same mindset as well. The numbers on a rubric were more significant than feedback, and the overall peer-reviewing process took away a little joy from writing for me. I started thinking of strategies to hit the standards every time instead of being more concerned with how I would end my pickle stories with a bang.
Not to sound dramatic because I know how dramatic I can get, but I hated writing by the end of elementary. Each imperfect rubric made my self-esteem go down. Writing felt like a chore. I didn’t like picking up my pencil. I didn’t write for fun anymore. I didn’t get any joy from writing unless I got a good grade. It was hard to let the words flow because I was so used to editing my thoughts in order to formulate formal essays.
But some pieces of writing made me satisfied for a bit, like my fourth-grade personal narrative about my trip with my mom because I got straight 4’s on it and my sixth-grade pentathlon essay because I got first place in the county for essay writing.
During the summer of seventh grade, I learned how to ace the five-paragraph essay, how first-person was a big no-no, how longer essays were better than shorter essays. I was excellent at writing academic-type essays like argumentative and informative papers, so I scored high on every essay in seventh grade. I didn’t write a single personal narrative or short story that year, but it didn’t matter. I got good grades and I didn’t miss creative writing because I didn’t remember how it felt when I wrote for fun.
Unfortunately, good things don’t always last, and my self-confidence in writing plummeted again when I was in eighth grade. I got 95’s at best on my essays, and my teacher’s reason for not awarding me full points was because I “didn’t sound like [myself]” in my essays.
What the hell?
Of course, I didn’t sound like myself. How was I supposed to sound like myself in a research essay about tattoos or an argumentative essay on the ethics of lying?
I felt like a bad writer again, mostly because I didn’t get 100’s on my essays. After reading each essay, I tried to establish my voice in my next essay so I could get those points, but I always came up short a few points and I felt even worse every time. My peers doubted my writing skills too, and that was when I stopped sharing my writing with people. Eventually, I told myself that I sucked at writing because I didn’t get a perfect score on our last academic essay.
But there were two writing assignments that I got perfect scores on and, surprisingly, one was a personal narrative and the other a short story. I hadn’t done creative writing in years so I wasn’t looking forward to these assignments. I wish I could say I had fun when I wrote them, but I don’t remember. What I do remember is being happy with the grade I got.
Fast forward to freshman and sophomore year and grades and writing still go hand in.
Besides writing essays, I also blogged freshman year. At first, I didn’t want to blog because I didn’t see why that was academic, but I ended up having fun. It was the first time in a while that I had word-vomited about what was on my mind. I revised and proofread-ed and published my first post, and I got five out of five. I felt good. I also think it was the first time in a while that the writing process stuck with me a bit more than the grade.
I was in Baron Banner, too. I felt like the worst writer on Earth after a few months of being in the class because I realized how uptight and boring I sounded compared to real articles from real people in real publications. And then I remembered what my eighth-grade teacher said about not sounding like myself. I went home and cried and wrote a blog post with no filter. It was lucid and I felt good when I was done.
In the middle of sophomore year, LA Times journalist Gustavo Arrellano visited Baron Banner. He said opinion pieces are often harder to write than news pieces because you need to have a voice to make your opinion article stand out, whereas news articles tend to follow the same structure. That stuck with me because opinion pieces were my thing, but he made me realize that they weren’t “my thing” until I got good at them by developing my signature.
So, I started experimenting with my writing in Baron Banner. I changed the way I wrote leads and tried to add a little of my personality into my articles. (But sometimes that backfired because sarcasm is hard to incorporate in writing. If you know, you know.)
That experimentation is what encouraged me to start writing more. Not just for Baron Banner, but in my free time as well, and that was a huge shift for me. Instead of writing for school and grades as I had done for the past eight years, I was writing for myself.
I was writing for myself.
I am writing for myself.
Myself.
I felt liberated when I finally managed to say it out loud in the shower.
Mr. Ziebarth had us read “Essay” by Daniel Coffeen at the beginning of the school year. That essay also liberated me because it redefined essays for me. To me, essays aren’t “a try,” they’re supposed to be “a highly polished, clean, clear monolith” (Coffeen). Maybe that’s why I didn’t really like writing essays in English. They were easy to write because the five-paragraph essay was my pretty my husband, but it made essays boring and predictable and rigid.
Coffeen writes that good essays are “a jouissance of thinking” and “take place on the page,” where your thoughts will meander and you’ll “never know where you end up.”
I think letting my thoughts flow onto paper is my favorite part of writing, and that’s exactly what I did when I learned how to write and what I’m doing now. I didn’t have a beginning or end in mind, but here we are.
Truth be told, school and grades are still everything to me. My grades influence how I feel about myself as a writer even though they shouldn’t, but it’s what I’ve known for the past eight years and those insecurities have ramped up. I usually don’t feel good about my work and I get nervous or embarrassed when someone is reading it. I think I’m a bad writer, or, at best, an average writer. I wish I could feel proud of my writing, but I still have a long way to go.
And all the writing I do for myself takes me down that long road. I think this post turned out okay. It’s not that good, but I had fun writing it. I also submitted my writing to an art contest, and I haven’t done that since I was ten.
Those are steps in the right direction, steps away from the classroom and grades.
