Junie B. Jones is my hero. She taught me many valuable lessons. Her books littered my room, giving me different adventures in every corner. The pages were wrinkled, dog-eared, well worn. I craved for the next trip to the library, and when the time for that trip finally came, I searched and searched for the books I haven’t read yet which proved difficult because there were so many I already read. It’s Junie B. Jones I must thank for showing me the world of writing. She gave me a gift, and a purpose. She even helped me recognize my own career path. She helped me realize my full potential by guiding me through my own writing by example of her clear voice and her attention to details.
I’m not ashamed to admit that I was lost for a long time. The future was now, and I still had no idea how to answer the Elementary School question of “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I became an English major because I wanted to translate my love for books and reading into an academic career. Sacha Kopp, Dean of CAS would agree with me because he thinks that “one’s major should be more about one’s interests.” I thought the idea of what to be would come to me in time, but I started to panic when my last semester came to, and I still didn’t know what I wanted to do. It seemed that everyone in every one of my classes already knew what they were destined to be: a teacher, an RN, a lawyer, a social worker, an engineer.
It was worse when others outside of the academic world talked to me about my career options. Learning that I am an English major, they would state, “Oh, so you want to be a teacher.” It’s never a question because to the outside world the only option for an English student is to go into education. When I responded with, “That’s not what I want to do,” they would look at me, frazzled. They would shake their head, their brow would furrow, and they would be dumbfounded that an English student could be more than just a teacher. “Well, what do you want to be then?” would always be their follow-up question. At the time, I would shake my head and say, “I don’t know yet.” They would smirk; they would judge; they would make it clear that I should know at my age. I could have stayed quiet and let them go on and on about how I need to figure something out, but I never did. I needed to defend not only myself, but the subject I loved. I would spit out as many career paths as I could think of that I could go into with a BA in English. Not until sometime after, I started to realize that all the possibilities I kept coming up with dealt with creative writing.
Deep down, I knew I wanted to be a fiction writer, but I was at a loss when it came to figuring out how to translate that love for writing into a career. My ideas for accomplishing that started coming into focus when I took two classes with Professor Kevin Clouther. Even though he uses “specialist languages [which] are tied to socially situated identities and activities (i.e. people use them to do things while acting as certain kinds of people with characteristic viewpoints, values, and ways of acting, talking and believing)” (Gee), he showed me what it takes to be a writer. He created workshops that showed me what works in writing, like voice and details, and what does not work. He forced me to take an outside perspective on my own writing, and to allow myself to accept criticism. He “encouraged [me] to adopt a rhetorical approach to writing—to consider [the] audience and the complexities of [my] writing context carefully when composing texts” (Schneider & Andre, 2005). Most importantly, he taught me how to be a stronger writer. I now turn to him as a mentor for all my writing projects, including the writing sample for the Children’s Literature Fellows Program application. He keeps my creativity flowing and pushes me to grow into a better writer. He challenges me to come up with new ideas and scenes. He challenges me to go back and rework parts that I thought were already finished. Most important though, he challenges me to keep pushing and developing as a writer.
It was because of his teachings and because of my passion that I can proudly say, “I want to be a writer.” I want to write fiction books, young adult books, children’s books. I want to showcase my voice, and I want to be an inspiration to children and young women, just as Barbara Park’s Junie B. Jones was to me.
After finally identifying my passion, I got to work. I searched for ways to start to get my voice out there. I came across an online magazine largely based elsewhere, but with smaller communities that run throughout the state and nation: Odyssey Magazine. I applied to write for Odyssey and quickly got involved in the community at my campus. Writing for this magazine allows my work to get published and read by a large audience. It allows me to stay creative and write about what I want to write about. Knowing that there are options out there for me to turn my desire for writing into a career path, I started brainstorming ways to strengthen my writing ability. That’s when I decided to apply to the Children’s Literature Fellows Program. I know it will be an incredible opportunity for me to learn from the best authors how to someday be where they are.
In the meantime, I am practicing my writing techniques and styles through the magazine, and I am keeping up with my studies by indulging myself in a book entitled Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them by Francine Prose. She is my road map. She is teaching me everything a writer must know and do to become a successful and powerful storyteller, for instance, she speaks of words, sentences, paragraphs, narration, character, dialogue, details, and gesture, all aspects a writer must consider. Doing my own research proves “the philosophy that intellect is not limited to the academy…” (Cherwitz & Sullivan, 2002).
Not only do I apply my voice and attention to detail to my studies, I apply them in my personal life as well. For instance, I’ve been a gymnastics coach for nearly seven years now. It’s my job to create a fun, energetic, and engaging environment for my students. I need to teach new skills in a creative way to invoke my students to want to learn. To get across to them how to accomplish a new skill, I need to have a voice, and I just don’t mean a loud one. I need to get through to my students, and sometimes changing the tempo of my voice or simply using a different tone or word choice can accomplish that.
I want to end on an anecdote that illustrates how my observation skills serve me as a writer. A peer of mine always has her head in her laptop, everywhere she goes, everything she does: she’s just always typing away. It’s hard to turn away from the technology that we’re presented with. It allows us to make greater and diverse connections we normally wouldn’t make. It allows us to write faster, to get more ideas together in a framed time space. It allows us to stay up to date on everything that is going on in the world and with our friends and family. However, it doesn’t allow us to spark our imagination. It takes away the real connection with people and the experiences one encounters on a day-to-day basis.
So, this girl was in one of my classes last semester. The class was a small class, consisting of about fifteen students. It was a close-knit class, which allowed the students to make connections and work with others in the class. This semester I encountered the laptop girl once more, but she didn’t remember me. She didn’t know my name or that we shared a class together, even though I remembered both about her. I strongly believe that the cause for that incident was because she constantly had her eyes glued to a computer screen, not bothering to glance up to take in her current surroundings. I, on the other hand, never bring a laptop/tablet to class. I sit in class and walk around campus with my head up, taking in the slight difference in brick color on the buildings and how the red awning over the entrance to the bookstore dips down just a bit as if there is a puddle of water pooling in the center. All these observations and experiences that I encounter are translated into details within my writing because “literate activity and identity in non-school areas (comedy, poetry, etc.) profoundly shape the writer’s educational activities” (Driscoll & Wells, 2012). I strongly believe that a person who takes in their surroundings and is involved in real-life experiences, not through a computer screen, will become a stronger, more successful writer because they have the advantage of translating the real world into their writing.
References
- Cherwitz, A. Richard, Sullivan, A. Charlotte. (2002). Intellectual Entrepreneurship: A Vision for Graduate Education. 23-27.
- Driscoll, Lynn Dana, Wells, Jennifer. (2012). Beyond Knowledge and Skills: Writing Transfer and the Role of Student Dispositions. Composition Forum, 26, 1-15.
- Gee. Shape-Shifting Portfolio People. 91-115.
- Kopp, Sacha. “There Is No Yellow Brick Road,” 1-2.
- Schneider, Barbara, Andre, Jo-Anne. (2005). University Preparation for Workplace Writing. Journal of Business Communication, 42(2), 195-218.