As the spring semester is slowly coming to an end, I look back to the past year, I look at all the work I did and I see this different “Anni” that I have become. I remember the first day of school, the excitement, the nerves and anxiety and I see myself now, so much more confident and really content about life. I always thought I could speak English but when I first arrived in New York I realized that I had a lot of gaps. Now my vocabulary is wider, I’ve learned how to use words and it makes me somehow powerful.
Besides from having changed a lot personally I believe that these past month have been academically one of the most challenging and interesting moments in my life. No need to say that the transition from high school to college is a big step but some forget that for foreign students it is even a “bigger deal”: we had to get familiar with the culture, the customs, the food and we had to learn to express ourselves in a language that we do not feel familiar with. Is there a bigger frustration than not being able to say what you feel? It’s like everything that people say flows into you, you understand almost everything but your answer gets stuck somewhere on its way out: blank…no words… The only thought is “how do you say this in English?”. Then you get theses looks, the people you are having a conversation with wait, I understood, I am thinking but not speaking. Finally they assume I am slow-minded and repeat everything. This is a sort of frustration that only people who have gone through this know and it makes you feel weak and vulnerable.
I think that until now I never knew how powerful words are. How hard must life be for mute!
When I think about words and my thoughts I realize how my hard effort, the desire to succeed, the stress and my sleepless nights are hidden behind the dozens of pages I have filled this year for my curriculum. These essays and research papers could as a matter of fact be the only evidence for others, that I have been actively thinking and working. Some professors might see the endeavor and good will of some students but some don’t and after all, getting no recognition of one’s own work is depressing. I like getting criticism on my work so I can eventually get better but the job of our educators is also to give incentive and one not always get it.
I could ask myself what all my effort was for and if it was really worth it but I don’t because in the end I enjoyed it. However I remember the moments I was desperate and I thought I couldn’t do what was expected. I would be staring at the empty white sheet of paper or actually my blank screen. The cursor is blinking : tick tick tick tick and I have no idea how to fill that page until I start writing one word, then a sentence and I can not stop going on. This sensation of putting thoughts into words is awesome and everybody has most likely experienced a moment of inspiration and urge to write. Personally I have noticed that I especially feel like writing when I feel sad: it helps me articulate my feelings and while writing it helps me to reflect about what happened and sometimes I realize that life is after all not so bad. Writing my English research paper also made me develop a firm position on a specific issue (homosexuals) that I could not have supported without reading so much. The entire research process thought me how to deal with and process the immense amount of information we are all exposed to.
Another experience about writing is that it frequently involves reading and that is definitely something I take pleasure in. I admire authors who know how to play with words and make them powerful. I particularly like similes, metaphors and quotes because they make me think and they express so much in only a few words: this is an art.
Nonetheless coming back to my personal writing experience, I have to say that it has after all been a very inspirational and enriching process. The feeling of achievement after fulfilling my duties was stronger than the “suffering”. Could I have learned the same and prove my acquired knowledge if I have not been pushed by my professors? Probably not and I truly think it has built up my self esteem: the temptation to plagiarize has often been an easy alternative but once you see that your own work is better (or at least “real”), plagiarism is no longer an option. Personally I do not only work for my professors, I do it mainly for myself but I do in fact look for some recognition. Receiving credit from my professors, even if they do not agree with what I wrote, makes me proud. Everything I learned this semester will be part of my life and I learned from it but I also somewhere hope that the people who have read my essays enjoyed it. There is a quote about writing from Anaïs Nin, who describes what we should try to do: “The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say”. When I was choosing the topic for the research paper I was tempted to pick a more ordinary topic (which other classmates had chosen) and it would have been probably easier than my controversial topic on the effects of homosexual parents on children but I decided to opt for challenge.
I don’t consider myself a “good writer” but I can see some improvement since September 2007. Also I have found out a lot about myself: I know now that facing defies is hard but you get rewarded. In the end I can only agree with a quote from Norbet Platt, that says: “The act of putting pen to paper encourages pause for thought, this in turn makes us think more deeply about life, which helps us regain our equilibrium.”
Works cited:
Nin, Anaïs, “Quotations about Writing” http://www.quotegarden.com/writing.html,04/29/08
Platt, Norbet, “Quotations about Writing”, http://www.quotegarden.com/writing.html, 04/29/08
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