Freedom of Voice within Constructs
While reading through my texts of the year I saw a shift in who I was writing for. In many classes, students learn to continue to write for their teachers. They must first gain the liking of the teacher, then learn what that teacher is looking for while perusing through papers, and then write in the exact style that appeals to the said teacher. In my first post, titled ‘about me’, I freely wrote for myself as it was a creative post though my mood changed for the next two. In the tracing project and impersonation post, I remember feeling constrained in my creative thinking. I just wanted to fit the parameters my teacher had set while meeting this explosion of ideas she was pushing for. At a loss of finding these ideas, I put as much as I could on a piece of paper while not straying far from the main topic in order to not “fill the space.” In return I did not do well on these though I had felt as though these are the ones I had put the most effort into.
Thankfully, a personal reflective post came about to my benefit. The favorite poem post put me back on my feet as I could write about something I had pondered for months. As a new reader to poetry in the past few months, I had a few poems previously tucked away for an opportunity like this and hence my first ‘Satisfactory’ came about. Mary Oliver’s work is broad enough to allow the reader to write on the nuanced insights she lays out for you to contemplate on your own and it led me to feel free enough to instill my own voice in my writing without worrying too much about the nearly nonexistent rules. Next came the roundtable post which reverted me back to writing for the teacher. In a subject I was already not thrillingly interested on led me to work countless unproductive hours trying to see something that may not have even been there with small generic sparks coming every once in a while. Knowing when I turned it in, I again got another unsatisfactory and didn’t care for my work much after that. When trying to put my voice into each piece, it seemed I was at a loss or couldn’t find the time to amongst my other coursework.
Happily, the last two posts allowed me to write freely and burst my creative bubble into the last month of class. With my multimedia project, I brought in the new media of singing and seeing a song through the words of a well-known author earned me the ‘Sophisticated’ I was waiting for the whole semester. No matter what a teacher says about the course not being about the grade will never amount to anything in a student’s mind. When everyone is looking at your numbers as a measure of your worth, it kind of is all about the grade. Thus, one last project is in and it is the megalithic book project that haunted everyone at the end of the year. Although this project worried most, I constantly worked on it as I had a vision from the beginning and I strived to show my creative abilities. I 100% think they showed through and I will get a ‘Satisfactory’ on that. I developed two beautiful characters and made each detail add something to the whole of the book.
On a lighter note, I feel my comments always allowed for the post-maker to receive constructive criticisms with the light tone I always have. Trying to relate to the writer in doing so got my message across and stuck with them making my comments carry more worth than if I was insincere. Overall, I believe my posts and comments added to the whole personality of the classroom a great deal and bonded with some of the finest Davidson college students in the process of it. I believe I have a new set of tools to get my voice across to others and will continue to try to let my own voice through each paper while staying inside the parameters set before me.
