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Joshua Antonious ENGL 1103 Professor Keaton 28 April 2013

When one asks how I became the writer I am today, one particular memory rushes to mind. When I was 6 my mother would require me to read a book and then take my ink stained composition book and write down the contents of the book from cover to cover. After hundreds of hand spasms, thousands of shed tears, and countless angry words muttered under my breath, I realized why she was forcing me to do this. I slowly learned how certain authors wrote. When I was little I read the Magic Tree House series and noticed that the author introduced concepts that related back to school, such as the dinosaurs, space, and different types of animals. When I got older I read the Harry Potter series and noticed that J.K. Rowling was using more advanced verbiage than I was accustomed to. I was forced to look up the words and commit them to memory. It enhanced my vocabulary and I was able to understand why the authors were using certain vocabulary and at the age group they were targeting. I was able to learn new writing techniques and was then able to think about why the writer chose to convey the message they did in the way they chose. I was able to see the differences in between first, second and third person, thought the various series.

Not only did this afford me the opportunity to become a stronger reader and writer but also to become a critical thinker. The ability to critically think is imperative to achieving success in school, work, and ultimately, life.

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What does it mean to be successful in life and how do writing and critical thinking allow one to have the upper hand? In my short 18 year tenure in this world, I have been able to take advantage of opportunities that have altered my life forever. At the age of 6 I was placed into an accelerated learning center. I would go there in the morning as well as after school for two to three hours Monday thru Friday. There I was taught Spanish, ASL, as well as advanced mathematics and English concepts. I was in that school for 4 years during which I grew as an individual. Most six years old were focused on having fun and running around the mulch filled jungle gym and going down the seemingly monstrous eight foot Barney purple slide, not thinking about their times tables and reading books to get ready for the upcoming SRI test. In 5th grade I was taken out of the learning center and allowed to be a normal child after school. During my 5th grade year I was placed in to the gifted program. I was awkwardly removed from my standard class twice a week to go with the gifted students for an hour to work on project that didnt relate to life or school at all. This had the most substantial impact on me as a writer today. Being placed in those programs with that excessive amount of rigor really had an impact on me. I was forced to remove emotion from my day to day life and to focus on the concrete rather than the abstract. The only time I could pour my emotions out was in to my writing. When I write I tend to take the more emotion route. I want the reader to feel what I was feeling; I want them to hurt if I was hurting and to smile when I was smiling.

Middle school was a little different compared to most adolescent teens. I was placed, again, in a gifted program. This program focused on advanced mathematics and sciences, never a pleasurable English class. My love for math was found during these three years. My distain for

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English was able to grow and I detested going to English class, until my 8th grade year. Mrs. Keith was the name of my 8th grade advanced English teacher. Standing at over six feet tall with long blonde hair and the demeanor of a mom, she treated each of her students like they were her own kids. The way she approached English was something I had never seen. She would allow the students to pick our writing topics. Whatever interested us is what we were allowed to write on. She taught us the myriad of writing methods and planning methods; such as brainstorming, spider webs, bullets, and small expositions. Her class is where I was able to find myself as a writer. I found how I write best, in what environments I operate most efficient in, and that it is okay to be emotional in writing. I am not able to write at home in my room like a lot of kids are. There are too many distractions that encompass my room and I could never delve into the piece. I need to be at a library or a classroom, A place where I can put my headphones in and just really type my heart out. She encouraged us to push our writing, to go outside of our comfort zones in order to really be able to connect with the reader. She would make us read our pieces aloud and then would have other students provide feedback on the work. We all tried to get our work right the first time and ask ourselves the questions we foresaw coming. She taught me how to see the same issue from different perspectives in order to understand the real issue at hand.

When I sit down to write I start with just throwing thoughts down onto a scrap sheet of paper. I was never able to make a web, or diagram, or a list of exactly what I want to talk about. When I was forced to do those methods in school, my writing suffered. I wasnt able to stray from the organizational pattern and that confined my creativity. When I am able to just throw ideas on a sheet of paper and then start writing my work shows my creativity and my thought process. When a teacher would set a page limit I would freak out. I dont see the reasoning

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behind page caps. It forced me to trim my ideas down or for me to remove them completely. Mrs. Keith never gave us page caps. I wrote her a 5 page descriptive essay on my athletic career and how it shaped me as a person, while others wrote only 2 pages. Having the freedom to just write without limitations allows my mind to wander and think about new perspectives as well as bolster the creativity.

When I went into high school, I was, unbeknownst to me, nearing the end of my baseball career. Baseball was my life for 10 years. I didnt see baseball as a sport; I saw it as a lifestyle. Baseball taught me about pride, sportsmanship, and humility to name a few. In an instance, the life I knew was taken away from me. It was the middle of All Star season on a miserable Florida June afternoon during a regular exhibition game. I had been pitching for 2 innings and my arm felt as good as ever. I was going from the windup, my catcher signaled with three fingers on his inside thigh, meaning curveball inside. At this point in my life I had thrown thousands of curve balls in practice as well as in games. I nodded my head in agreement, then slid my worn out Nike into the worn down mound against the rubber. As my leg rises to form the perfect angle, my fingers slide around the hard leather to grip the gleaming red laces. I continue through the wind up. As I ark my arm back and begin to lunge forward, I felt a bit of discomfort in my shoulder. It was too late to stop the throw. As I whipped my arm around, I felt a pop in my shoulder and fell to the ground. After consulting my doctor, I was informed that I had torn my rotator cuff and that I had two options. Option 1 was to get surgery, and then wait a few months and then be able to play baseball again. Option 2 was for me to give up baseball and go into heavy physical therapy in order to strengthen the muscle around my rotator cuff. I choose option 2. For months after I fell into a state of depression. Everything I knew and loved was taken away from me in an

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instance. I found comfort in writing. I would write stories of my life and how I was feeling about current event. At this point in my life I felt completely lost. I started writing a book loosely based on my life. This is where I found my comfort in writing. I was able to live my dream life, without truly living it. I became the main character and spent months working on the book. I never finished it and I am okay with that. The book provided a much needed outlet for me. I was lost and thought that I had nothing going for me in my life. Writing allowed me to see that my future is my choice. It allowed me to understand that just because one event happened in a persons life doesnt mean that they are damned for all eternity. They are in complete control of their actions and need to make the best ones they can. I was able to live the life I wanted in my story. It was a light bulb moment that hit me at the beginning of the school year. Why cant I live this life? I asked myself for weeks. Thats when I decided to become who I wanted and did what made me happy. Writing didnt only help me pass time but it helped me find myself as a person.

I then found a new love, swimming. Once I was introduced to swimming I came out of depression and was living life again. Since I found swimming, I learned how to become better in every aspect of my life. In every school paper of assignment I have always been able to incorporate swimming into them. My favorite assignment of all time was to write a narrative on a 30 minute time period. I wrote about my first districts meet from the warm up until the finish of the race. It forced me to really think about details and how to be descriptive in my writing. The biggest thing thats I took away from this paper was the ability to convey real emotion through writing. I found out really fast that in order to convey emotion one cant try to convey it. The best emotion is in the heat of the moment. When I write I just type whatever I am feeling and then never change it. The truth shines thru in writing like that. Constant revision or analyzing of

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emotion is what causes it to be misconstrued or unbelievable. If a piece doesnt convey emotion and conveys it well, the reader will get bored and confused and may not mentally fully invest into the piece. When a piece is emotional the reader gets sucked in and is left wanting more. Look at the different book series that do this, Harry Potter, Twilight, and the most recent bookmovie fan favorite, Hunger Games. These books make you feel for the characters and create a complete new world and scape goat for people. I found it relatively easy to convey emotion. As long as I truly felt the emotion I was able to lace the words I was writing with it.

My stance on writing used to be that it was something my teachers and mom forced me to do as punishment or as filler for the sake of time. The truth though? After writing this paper I was able to see how much writing has really changed my life. I wouldnt be the person I am today without writing. Writing was the one thing that never changed, the one thing that never left me the one thing that never gave up on me. Writing is the one thing in a persons life that can be whatever they want. Whether it be books, poems, magazines, or anything else. Writing is the ultimate outlet to the true you.