First came the ABCs, followed by practicing writing her letters to form words on paper, never mind the proper use of them yet. With words came sentence structure that in turn was followed by the ability to organize ideas in a comprehendible manner. Breaking down these words allowed Katie to read books and eventually write about these books, all the while also presenting her with a way to think on her own. If only her thoughts were what those teachers were looking for.
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The ability for an individual to think on his or her own is something I believe many people take for granted, not only everyday, but also in academic settings. The creativity of the mind is so important and by definition academia should be a place to strengthen our thoughts and excite our minds with new information to build upon. But then the question arises in my mind as to the point of teaching us everything that should be known about such and such, if we, as the students, are not encouraged to form our own opinions on the topic. Why must there always be a right and a wrong, especially when it almost always seems that the right is the instructor’s thoughts and the wrong is always my own? It is understandable for this to be acceptable in history, perhaps, where a fact is a fact, but what about in my English classes? Asking a class to read a novel and come prepared to discuss the main ideas is only as productive as defined by the teacher of the course. My reading and writing experiences in high school sent me to college believing that my English courses would merely go downhill from then on; however, the blindfold of rigid structure and narrow-mindedness was removed after my first class in English 101 which changed my views on the significance of both reading and writing for the better.
Unfortunately I have had my fair share of English teacher’s who insisted that what I see was not exactly correct because it was not what they themselves saw in the selected section. It has lead me to question why they even appear interested in my ideas if they intend to turn around with the ideas they have concocted concerning a novel that has been taught during that semester for the past however many years. It is because of experiences through out my high school career that I seem to approach writing almost cringing. This feeling results from receiving papers in which I received a lower grade simply because my ideas did not correlate with the ideas of the teacher. Overall, the papers had our thesis composed for us and if not the choices presented to write about encompassed the thoughts discussed in class concerning the novel from the teacher’s perspective.
The rigid structure presented by the high school I attended seemed to put me on a track that continuously passed by the same scenery. Of course my thoughts were my own, but they formed around the thoughts of my teachers; the papers were composed in the same format and manner with no healthy dose of change to the format or leeway concerning the idea of right and wrong perceptions. Unlike Graff’s idea to use templates as a starting point for each writer’s creative mind to work off of, English teachers from my past have given me a not only the thesis for my papers, but also the ideas that I should elaborate on, if I wanted to receive a good grade (Graff, XV). For this reason writing a paper is not such an attractive activity to me. I have no interest in taking someone else’s ideas, whether it is a teacher’s or a peer’s, and insisting that I also feel that way concerning the current subject. If that were the case then why do I have a mind of my own? I do not believe everyone should listen to what I have to say during every intellectual discussion; the point I am trying to prove is that I, as an individual, have my own ideas.
I desire to sit in a class where we have intellectual discussions and read the books that my mind can get lost in. It is the thought of tearing a novel apart, down to the same concepts that have been taught to all the classes before me, that lessens the significance of reading in my mind. I completely agree with Birkerts’ belief that books are not the distraction in our lives, rather they are what engage us and can become a private and solitary place for the mind (Birkerts). Reading should be something enjoyable that allows our minds to travel to another place in time. Discussions in class about the current reading assignment is something else I enjoy as long as the conversation doesn’t carry into the supposed right and wrong perceptions. Although I enjoy reading and sharing my perception of what I have read, I can’t stand sitting through the proclaimed “correct” observations of the teacher while my thoughts are looked at as insignificant. Unless otherwise stated by the author, I believe a book discussion is open-ended because anything can be inferred with support from the text.
So I entered college with the fear that every class would increase in difficulty by three or four notches and because of this I would end up hating reading and writing even more. In actuality I have come to realize quite the opposite. New ways of presenting my ideas actually allow me to elaborate on my own thoughts in my own way. I embraced the free form of college writing with open arms and read the assignments knowing that I would be able to branch off from any point in the specific chapter and voice my own thoughts. The excitement of being able to get creative with my thoughts also sparked my interest in reading the books assigned in class. Hayles’ argument that “the medium constructs the work and the work constructs the medium,” proves that the method used for expressing ideas and the ideas themselves work together to create the overall picture; which method is used only varies the display of the ideas, not the understanding of them (Hayles, 6). Therefore blogging is just as significant of a response to a novel’s main points, as would be writing an essay. Compared the rigidity of my high school English classes, I have already gained, in the first few weeks of college, the excitement for reading and writing that I didn’t quite know I had all because of the open-mindedness that the college English class presents.
Although I have had a good amount of what turned out to be discouragement, my opinions only grew stronger under the pressure to think similarly to the mainstream. Writing, once a grueling task, has assumed a new role in college as my ideas are allowed to blossom. Reading, once a tedious nit picking of pages, also has assumed a new role; now each book assigned seems to catch my interest. Maybe it is because I know I can think how I so choose about it, but I also think it is because I know that I will not be lectured, rather class the next day will host an intellectual conversation. It is a relief to learn that there are others out there that understand the importance of individual thought, because the mind is something that I strongly believe should never be taken for granted.
