Ok, why I write. Well first lets start off with why I don’t write. I don’t write for intellectuals. Academic essays have never been a strength of mine. Whenever a teacher asks me to write a analytical essay my stomach instantly knots up, and the anxiety sets it. I then put aside the essay until the night before, because procrastination is what I do best. I don’t write for teachers. This is a big one. All of my life I have been told to write the standard 5 paragraph essay, don’t add “I” to your paper, then I get to college and now teachers are saying don’t write the standard 5 paragraph essay, add your own voice to your essay, la de da. Every teacher asks for something different, but that is the beauty of writing; it is up to you. Yes you; the student.  
I dreaded having to take writing classes in high school. Writing was the one thing that actually made me feel stupid. As a straight A, school-comes-easily-to-me type of student,  feeling unintelligent never came naturally to me. I was the go-to girl for help when it came to tough classes. I always just knew the answer. Writing was different though; there was never one concrete answer, and this irked me to no extent. Whenever assigned an essay, of course me being the golden student I would go in right away for extra help. However after these meetings with teachers I always felt even more confused with what they wanted from me. Why can’t they just give me a straight answer my flustered mind would think. One teacher would ask me for a 4-page, research paper, then the next teacher would assign me a personal essay; 6-page paper. Clearly, very different styles of writing; one paper asks me to write in a formal voice, and the next asks me to write in my voice...what even is my voice. This was the problem, I always felt so pulled. I was so caught up in giving the teachers what they wanted that I never even considered trying to find my own voice. I know these teachers were only trying to help me, but it is difficult as a student trying to write to their standards when their are so many different ways to write. It never even crossed my mind that I could add my own voice, my own unique twist, to writing, because I feared receiving a bad grade. 

My second semester of freshman year at Wake Forest. I enrolled in a required freshman writing class. Of course, another required writing class I have to struggle through. First day of writing class; the professor took us through the syllabus. “We will write a total of three essays, however I will have you write everyday.” Ok I can handle three essays, but writing everyday?! That I could not handle. I hate writing, I don’t write, and there is no way I am going to write everyday. 

Flash forward to several weeks in the writing class. I was journaling everyday for the class, just as he said, but I was just writing for me. Never had I written something just for me, it has always been for a teacher, a grade, a college, but never for me. I enjoyed the time I spent journaling and would prioritize that over my class work. We sometimes would do free writes in class. This was another foreign concept to me; writing for the heck of it, but not having to turn it into the teacher to receive a grade. I discovered through the journal entries and freewrites that without the weight of a grade, and the feeling of my teacher breathing down my neck as a write, I actually could write some interesting pieces. When I turned in my first essay I explicitly remember someone reading over it and saying “I really could hear your voice in this”.  Voice? That thing that had been lost in so many of my previous essays actually decided to make an appearance once and for all, and you know what is funny about that essay? I actually enjoyed writing it and  I received an A on it. Through the journals and freewrites I discovered how to write in a way that pleased me; an informal style. When I write informally I forget about everything else. The grades, if I am doing the assignment correctly or if it is exactly what the teacher wants. I just write. 

Now here I am taking Writing 212 at Wake Forest. This time taking a writing class was my choice. Although as long as I am in school I will have to continue to write formal pieces of writing.. I appreciate it.  I understand the importance of writing and I want to continue to grow as a writer. I still journal everyday because writing helps to organize my thoughts. When I sit down and just write it seems like everything starts to make sense; the little voice comes out, my voice. I reflect on my time in high school and how I looked at writing as a burden. If students were encouraged to write from time to time without all the pressure and rules from school I truly believe students would grow immensely as writers, and enjoy it too. 
As a college student now who is just starting to see the amazing benefits of writing, I long for other students to go out and search for their voice. I understand how easy it is to get tangled up in all the expectations from teachers, and the desire to succeed, but writing is so much more than just a history paper. Writing has the the power to take a thought or idea and extend it to a place you couldn’t have imagined. Writing preserves your thoughts so you can reflect, writing expresses emotion and who you are as a person, it takes what is inside your brain and makes it permanent, real, concrete. Writing honors ones voice. 

I said earlier why I don’t write, but that may have been a white lie, because I still write for teachers and intellectuals. Quite frequently actually. However, I took away all the burdens I used to feel when I wrote, and I blocked them from my mind. When I write an essay I look at it as a challenge, as a way to authorize my voice and grow. I love to write. I have gone from loathing any writing class to being a writing minor in the course of the past 5 years. I don’t blame the teachers in high school for my struggles, but I do credit the ones I have had here at Wake Forest for unmasking my voice. Writing may not have an exact answer like a math question does, but it has life to it; humor, melancholy, angst, so many emotions can go into writing. When I read an essay and can hear the author's voice it feels as if I have a map to their brain, I can bet money that no math problem can do that. But that gets into why I read; an entirely different essay I may or may not write, who knows, wherever my thoughts take me the next time I write.