Essay #1

Rhianna Hatton

10-20-15

English 101 5:30pm

Dr. Sonia Apgar Begert

            I have always had problems with reading and writing for as long as I can remember. Back in kindergarten I remember I have some trouble keeping up with the other kids. It always felt like I was not as smart as the other kid but I do remember being told that I had a great imagination that one day would come in handy. When third grade came around the schools tested me to see if I needed to be taken out of class every day to be taught reading and writing outside of the classroom. After that I had always been in a special reading/writing class on top of having a normal English class.

            These classes would let me think outside of the box when it came to writing. One year during I think fourth grade my special English class were trying to write short stories. When I finished mine I felt good, so I went home asked my parents if they could give me a journal. That journal I used to write a story that was going to be a short one but it ended up turning into about three different children’s books. They were about a lion named yoyo who had a son named teddy. The books would fallow their lives and tell stories of them solving some crimes. They were some really neat stories but in never felt that people would like them, so I put them away and never looked at them again.

            The books were placed into a cooler that I had been using as a night stand. Didn’t realize that I had kept the books but one night I felt like reading them. When I was done reading the stories it restarted my love to write stories for kids. For weeks the books went through a rewrite stage, but every time I would change something to make it feel like someone who knew what they were doing wrote it. It made no since so I stopped trying to fix it and tried to just fix the spelling. After all of the fixing I finally felt that I could share the stories with someone but once I did I got made fun of. So again I put away the books and stopped writing stories.

            For some time the only stories that I would write were essays a teacher would like me to write or stories that were just for me and sometimes for my brothers. By the time I was in high school I started to feel like people liked what I wrote or that they wouldn’t make fun of me as much. I was right people loved my stories the only thing was my spelling. For some reason I still can’t spell that well and people still make fun of me just not as bad. My writing skills have improved over the years but there is still some work to do. That’s why when I got to Olympic college they placed me into a lower English class which I would say was one of the best English classes I have ever been in.

During last year my little sister (best friend) Natalie was going through my room trying to help me get rid of some things. When she came across my little books. Natalie looked at me and asked what they were. I told her that she could read them if she would like, so she did. When she was done reading the stories she turned to me smiling and somewhat laughing. I asked Natalie why she was laughing at me and she said because the stories were good but they showed her the young little Rhianna. My stories to her showed her my childhood imagination and how I could dream up a whole different place in detail. Natalie then asked why I never really finished them. That’s when I explained that I didn’t know how people would feel about the books and that I would get made fun of because of my imagination. She then found a journal of mine and began to read that as well, when she was done reading the journal. Natalie turn to me again and then realized that I did have a hard time with reading and writing, she understood why I never showed anyone any of my writing that was done just for me.

            One of the things that I have found that helps me work on my writing is the personal journal that is about my daily life. The journal is filled with my thoughts, what went on during the day like the ups and downs, or even just my dreams/ goals. Sadly thought I am not that good at keeping with it. For example I might write in it every day, once a week, or even once every two months. I think the reason why is because reading or writing is not my favorite thing to do. I have tried to read a book and finally finish it but I never do.

            When the movie The Help came out I wanted to see it, but my dad said that the only way was if I could read the book from cover to cover. So we went to Walmart to pick up the book. Once we got home I sat down on the bed and began to read it, for about a week I was reading it every day on the bus and right before I went to bed. I still have yet to finish reading the book from cover to cover, because when the movie came out on Blu-ray my dad went out and bought it. He told me that he had bought it but we were not going to watch it until I was done reading the book. A month later I still had not finished the book. My dad gave up and we ended up watching it. The only book I ever finished cover to cover I think was a book that my father and I read together.           

            I did learn something from trying to read The Help. The lesson was that the book is always better than the movie but to me the movie are still good even if they don’t always fallow the story line all the way. Once I realized that I tried to read the Hunger Games books before the second movie. I almost finished the book before I went to the movies. When the movie finished I was mad at the movie people because they left out a lot of info that made more since then what they said/ did in the movies. This made me not want to read the books before the movie but after all of the movies came out, because I love movies and I don’t want to be thinking about how much the movie people messed up.

So I plan on reading the last book after the last movie comes out. This might seem a little crazy but it makes since to me because I can enjoy the movie and the book without being mad at the movie makers during the movies. So as you can see I am not big on reading and writing unless I really have to or I feel like it’s worth my time to sit and relax with a book in my hand other than that it will be rare to see me with a book in hand.