It amazes me.
Here we are, day in and day out, reading about revolutionaries, navigating their ideas and their work, exploring our thoughts on their thoughts from the safety of a classroom. We've tasted the tales of Smith and Edwards, Wollstonecraft and Fitzgerald, Lincoln and O'Brien. We've bent our backs over biographies, cramped our hands because of essays, burned out our brains over the bombast of writers long dead. It's time-consuming, it's thought-provoking, it's brain-breaking... it's fun.
But have we done anything?
My writing has improved, expanded, my mind is more open, but I'm still trying to churn out blogs and rough drafts and failing fantastically! My completed writings are gathering dust, fly legs and skin particles atop grades derived from late nights and long hours. It makes me sad. It makes me wonder why I'm writing if my words mean nothing more than the number penned onto my paper.
Do our words mean anything more than an assignment? Than busywork? Who else besides this AP Comp Class will hear us? I thought writers wrote with reason. What happened to the purpose behind the pen?
Don't misunderstand--AP Comp has been one of my favorite classes ever. I love it; I look forward to it! I'm sad we have only a few weeks more. But as with most of school, I've learned more interacting and listening to people than I have from any homework.
All I want is a reason. Not a "college peeps love a good essay" or "it'll help you in the future". College is important, sure, but who evaluates a person solely on their grades and rhetoric? That's stupid. People are so much, much more than that. And my future? What about my now? What about yours?
So let's do something! Write a revolution! Put purpose into our papers! Herald our own halos instead of looking back at the historic, over-glorified greats! We are a generation made for a waiting world and we are more than our test scores, so why are we damning ourselves to our desks?
I have ideas, and I can't be the only one. Call me greedy, call me crazy, or call me out for what I am--someone who is sick and tired of being sick and tired.
The rant ends here. Homework calls.
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Ah. You just depressed me. I try to look at all the papers as if I'm actually doing something and as if they'd be worth publication. I do feel your pain. Over the summer, I was writing a decent amount of what I wanted to write, and I enjoyed it fantastically. With the load I've had to keep up during the school year, I've probably written between 20,000 and 35,000 words for assignments or pleasure. I would guess that 3000 of that has been on my own wishes.
ReplyDeleteStefanie-
ReplyDeleteThis is a great post.
I say that because you managed to make me relate to and feel for something I didn't think I was a part of/didn't think was affecting me. I've never really written for pleasure. I sort of kind of used to/still do keep a journal, but that's mainly for writing about things that are most certainly NOT pleasurable. Other than that I can't really credit all this AP Comp reading and writing of other people's ideas that we've been doing (or, for that matter, my other classes) with taking any writing freely away from me (READING freely is a whole other story, though). However, this blog post did make me think about what I have been writing for this class. Has anything I've written meant anything more than a grade? Sometimes I feel like it hasn't, which is really sad. I don't like the idea that I can't do something I like (writing) unless I think I'm going to get something out of it (a grade). Your post sort of helped me see that what I should be "getting out of" writing is just an appreciation that I can write and DID. So thanks.
On a side note. . .how did you get that fish tank thing on the side of your page?! That distracted me for a good five minutes before I got to posting.