Junior Year: A New Dawn
I was in Beauty and the Beast my junior year as a silly girl!
I liked my junior year of high school. Scratch that: I LOVED my junior year of high school. I don't know what happened to me over the summer, but I became a new person. I was confident, happy and aware of who I was and where I was going. I had great friends, great teachers, and I had found a passion in theatre. It was a complete 180 from my sophomore year, and I couldn't be happier. This was the year where I really began developing my writing style. I was in a position where I was comfortable with my life, and as I further settled in to my education, I began to focus more on writing for myself and not for others.
I loved all my teachers this year, but I specifically enjoyed having my english teacher be Ms. Zimmerman. She enjoyed her classes and really cared for her students, so her classroom was a place that I felt safe and capable of creating something unique with my writing. I felt a complete sense of trust and companionship with her. She became a mentor and companion to me throughout my years at high school and influenced many of my decisions for college. She was a Western graduate as well, majoring in English Education, just like me, and she is part of the reason I chose to study here. She was a wonderful teacher and an even greater role model to me and she opened my mind up to bigger and better things in writing. I wrote some of my greatest papers in her classes and read some of the most powerful books under guidance. I will never forget the influence she had over me.
I enjoyed that, in her class, we were able to do writing projects and were able to focus on fixing the flaws in our writing. I remember much of our writing was based on books that we had read, our responses to them and such. However, this was helpful for me in developing my vocabulary and learning how to write good research papers and opinion-based papers. This was definitely a year of flourishing for me. It was also the year that I began to think about what I wanted to do with my future. I really wanted to do something with English, but I think my passion for theatre outshined this at the time, so I made a decision to apply to theatre schools. However, seeing how amazing of a teacher Ms. Zimmerman was did enourage me to look into English programs at different universities. I felt very confident in my writing during this time, and therefore wanted to explore my options in terms of furthering my writing career. I still sort of regret not attending school for writing initially, but I think my brief break from writing in college has helped me to appreciate more the beauty of writing today.
In applying for colleges, I had to write essays. Many, many essays, or at least many drafts of essays. This was a challenge for me, as I had to start exploring and expressing my life and my accomplishments through writing. This was a difficult task, but it helped me to push myself to really improve my writing. I knew my essays needed to be perfect, so I went through several drafts before picking the perfect one. I do not have my original college essay that I sent to a majority of my schools, I only have old drafts of ones that didn't make the cut. But I was happy with the end result of months of work on my chosen essay, and I felt happy submitting it to my top choice universities. It was almost therapeutic writing my college essays. I kind of found myself while writing them, which was really interesting for me. It helped me come to accept myself and to realize that, although I wasn't a straight A student, I could certainly write. This was the year that I started using writing as more than just a way to communicate or to express myself to others. I began writing for myself, and I began to appreciate my writing without the needing the approval of others.
I loved all my teachers this year, but I specifically enjoyed having my english teacher be Ms. Zimmerman. She enjoyed her classes and really cared for her students, so her classroom was a place that I felt safe and capable of creating something unique with my writing. I felt a complete sense of trust and companionship with her. She became a mentor and companion to me throughout my years at high school and influenced many of my decisions for college. She was a Western graduate as well, majoring in English Education, just like me, and she is part of the reason I chose to study here. She was a wonderful teacher and an even greater role model to me and she opened my mind up to bigger and better things in writing. I wrote some of my greatest papers in her classes and read some of the most powerful books under guidance. I will never forget the influence she had over me.
I enjoyed that, in her class, we were able to do writing projects and were able to focus on fixing the flaws in our writing. I remember much of our writing was based on books that we had read, our responses to them and such. However, this was helpful for me in developing my vocabulary and learning how to write good research papers and opinion-based papers. This was definitely a year of flourishing for me. It was also the year that I began to think about what I wanted to do with my future. I really wanted to do something with English, but I think my passion for theatre outshined this at the time, so I made a decision to apply to theatre schools. However, seeing how amazing of a teacher Ms. Zimmerman was did enourage me to look into English programs at different universities. I felt very confident in my writing during this time, and therefore wanted to explore my options in terms of furthering my writing career. I still sort of regret not attending school for writing initially, but I think my brief break from writing in college has helped me to appreciate more the beauty of writing today.
In applying for colleges, I had to write essays. Many, many essays, or at least many drafts of essays. This was a challenge for me, as I had to start exploring and expressing my life and my accomplishments through writing. This was a difficult task, but it helped me to push myself to really improve my writing. I knew my essays needed to be perfect, so I went through several drafts before picking the perfect one. I do not have my original college essay that I sent to a majority of my schools, I only have old drafts of ones that didn't make the cut. But I was happy with the end result of months of work on my chosen essay, and I felt happy submitting it to my top choice universities. It was almost therapeutic writing my college essays. I kind of found myself while writing them, which was really interesting for me. It helped me come to accept myself and to realize that, although I wasn't a straight A student, I could certainly write. This was the year that I started using writing as more than just a way to communicate or to express myself to others. I began writing for myself, and I began to appreciate my writing without the needing the approval of others.
A Portion of my "Almost" College Essay:
(The one I wish I could have sent...)
At my high school, grades were not an indication of how much one aspires to learn. They were an indication of self-worth. The student who gets into Harvard is always praised. The student attending community college is overlooked and often thought of as "dumb" or "stupid". For a long time, I ostracized myself for not being that student who could attend Harvard. I constantly wished I had written more down or that I had listened more closely. I looked at my friends, with their 4.2 grade point averages and compared them to my seemingly mediocre average. Despite the fact that I have improved vastly since my freshman year (from a 2.6 to a 3.1 by the end of my junior year,) I truly despised the fact that I was just average. I wished I could have always been the perfect student.
But instead of wishing, I worked to turn myself around. Through social interaction, my teachers and I communicated to turn me into the student I wanted to be. Through creativity, I learned how to write an essay that a person would want to read instead of needing to. And last but not least, my eager imagination always pushed me to never give up. Being average is not always a curse. I consider it to be the best thing that even happened to me. Being average has always taught me that I always have more to strive towards. I always imagined I could be the best I wanted to be and although it took till my junior year to get to the right place, I'm here. In the end, I believe that’s what counts.
But instead of wishing, I worked to turn myself around. Through social interaction, my teachers and I communicated to turn me into the student I wanted to be. Through creativity, I learned how to write an essay that a person would want to read instead of needing to. And last but not least, my eager imagination always pushed me to never give up. Being average is not always a curse. I consider it to be the best thing that even happened to me. Being average has always taught me that I always have more to strive towards. I always imagined I could be the best I wanted to be and although it took till my junior year to get to the right place, I'm here. In the end, I believe that’s what counts.
