One of the reasons I joined a class for writing consultants was to not fall into a writing rut. The other reason was destiny. When I was about six, my mom sent out a Christmas card that would haunt me to this day. Normally Christmas cards say things like "oh Lauren will only wear overalls and lost her two front teeth, she looks like the neighborhood hillbilly". Or, "on our last family vacation to St. Martin Rich noticed a cafe sign "The Equator" and yelled to everyone around him that we had finally made it. We hadn't". Christmas cards, like all good literature have the ability however to be prophetic. When it came to me, "Caroline is a space cadet, she writes her own stories and brings home books with titles like, Indonesia: the monsoon land, she's either going to be a world leader or an English major". After spending a good amount of time telling everyone who asks, and with a great deal of annoyance on my part, I have no intention of majoring in English, here I am at the University learning to write and loving it, with every intention of becoming a writing consultant and English major, whatever that means.
The transition to college writing has been intimidating and I certainly haven't come near to completing my metamorphosis yet. High school writing is spending three years in terror and hype for that one gigantic senior seminar paper (fifteen pages only), and sitting through lecture after lecture in the chapel of my school thinking about the dead bird in the stairwell rather than bibliographies. College writing is reading my assignment on the syllabus, and doing it, or at least doing my best, maybe with a few late library nights. There is a marked lack of handholding that I both fondly miss and briskly proceed without. I think the experience that sums up my general frustrations with my writing is a conference I had with my First Year Seminar teacher about a hefty paper. She sat me down in her office that could have been Prof. McGonnagal's had it not been for the impressive floor to ceiling bookshelves stuffed full with classic novels mostly, some that I recognized. Spred out on the table were six well-written pages on God knows what. I certainly didn't. I thought I had a thesis, but sitting there staring at the pages and listening to my professor ask me questions on the topic I realized I had no idea what I wanted to say. It was then that she ventured to tentatively say, "Caroline, I think your thoughts in class are a lot more mature than your papers". I wanted to scream. Yes, I knew that! That is why I had asked to schedule the meeting, that was why I was there getting extra help, that was why I hadn't aced every last paper and why I was in college. She might as well have said, "You can't write very well" and I would have readily agreed. It's so easy to recognize something that isn't deftly crafted, but I have no delusions of greatness in my writing and I'm rarely interested in the opinion of others when it comes to whether or not something I write is "good" or "bad", hopefully I can recognize that for myself. What I'm interested in isn't nearly as passive as this sort of label. The comments that i'm far more likely to be receptive to are progressive, and address how to improve and move writing forward, not what I can't or didn't do, but what can be done.
