Donnaven Clark
Comp English
May 17th
Personal growth
Writing as a kid has always been a struggle of mine; inserting my thoughts on the paper has never really been the issue for me, but sounding like myself is where things would get tough. Generally I would have about a page and a half done in a relatively fast time which is great but, as I read over my work I would find myself constantly getting rid of the majority of my work, feeling that my way of speaking just wasn’t good enough, or that things were just too “informal”. This way of thinking was taught to me from such a young age in writing and I feel that the lack of individuality I had and always trying to meet a certain expectation in how to sound when I was writing really held me back. I constantly just loathed the idea of even taking an English course and for my first semester of college in 2021 I completely avoided an English class, not wanting to deal with anytype of writing assignments where it just honestly felt like I couldn’t have my own voice.
When first coming into class semester we had an assignment the first day of class, it was to simply explain your favorite food. A task to do but a lot of of people were very generic and bland with their description, and the professor would constantly pester them with bombaring request of specificity; after that and the constant free write prompts we discussed in the following few classes, I started noticing just how important it was going to be for me to release my own voice. Around my second week of school I felt like I really started realizing a difference in how often we were talking about being comfortable with having your own voice, but still being able to express the message in a way that was clear for the audience to understand. In class we went over a video about a ted talk of a woman named Jamilla Lysicott; it was called three ways to speak english. Throughout the video Lysicott would switch up her form of speech through three different types of “english” explaining how each form of speech is articulate in its own right because every form of english has its own rules. The first form of english from her was the regular english that we are taught is “proper english”, so no type of slang words or broken english so words like hello, and phrases like how are you doing; the next form of english she introduced was her homeland version that she would usually use when talking to her caribbean parents, and the last form would be how she talks with her friends, some examples would be: what’s good?, yo bro, and nah thats crazy; and what she was trying to explain was that all three forms of english is “proper english” one is not more important than the other, since english itself is made up from a bunch of other languages, so what seems articulate or ignorant to others is only because they are unaware of the someone else’s form of english. This was an eye opener for me because I realized that my way of speaking and thinking was just my own diction and is what helps people recognize me from others.
Later in the semester after learning about my diction and practicing more and seeing how it was an extremely important part of my writing, we then went over a piece about first drafts. First drafts was another huge issue in my writing progress; the reason for this being is because I am somewhat of a perfectionist and so I always want my first time to be as perfect as perfect gets, and that is a great mentality to have but I feel that to amount of pressure I put on myself really made the progress of my essay and other writing pieces extremely minimal. That was until we read the “piece shitty first drafts” by Anne Lamot. Lamot in that piece was extremely relatable to me and probably gave me the biggest form of advice of normalizing a not so perfect first go. The importance of just getting your thoughts on the paper is really what the main focus should be when trying to write a new piece for two reasons. The first being that if you cannot further continue your thought process in your first draft then you know that, the topic you are writing about may just not be for you; and also because when writing your first draft, you really get to be creative and just get most of the thoughts you have down on the paper; practically making the base for the rest of the essay. “Shitty first drafts” message throughout the story screamed it was okay to not be perfect, and I really needed to understand that. Nobody in this world is perfect. Some may seem closer than others but nobody is perfect at the end of it all, so it was only normal for me to make mistakes.
Looking back to these past two or three months spent in this English class I feel like I actually learned a really valuable lesson in understanding myself. Knowing that I can tell a story just through my way of speaking and how much more of an impact it can have on somebody understanding. At first coming in i expected this to be a class of just countless essays that had a minimum of 7 pages, and countless evidence needed for each page; however the more we went through the class I felt like each piece we read was just really there to force me to question my way of writing; is this how I would sound? Do I feel comfortable giving out something others find normal? Is the way that I’m speaking too informal? These were all questions that I had to ask myself and currently today I feel like I can confidently say that I am able to answer all of those questions confidently. I am extremely appreciative of this class, and for further writing classes I may take in the future, I am confident that my abilities have improved to an extent where I can show off my diction and syntax in a much more clear manner, and really show people just how articulate I am.
Citations:
Jamila Lyiscott: 3 Ways to Speak English | Ted – YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9fmJ5xQ_mc.
Shitty First Drafts – University of Kentucky. http://wrd.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/1-Shitty%20First%20Drafts.pdf.
