For the Love of Writing

Writing makes me excited. When I'm faced with the seemingly daunting assignment of a 10-12 page research paper on a topic that I care about, I get this odd feeling of power. Like I have the power to reach so many people. Hope that my voice can somehow make a difference. Idealistic, I know, but it's my weird way of getting a high. Sometimes I'm so excited to write a paper that I get all these books to research, articles to read, but I have so many ideas that I don't know where to start and I get so overwhelmed by all the things that I want to say, and I get so distracted because before I even start writing, I'm scared to potentially destroy what could be something so great. My little masterpiece. If that makes sense whatsoever.

Right now I'm writing a paper about mainstream teachers - i.e. White, upper-middle class, female teachers - in inner-city, urban schools and their effectiveness on classroom success. I picked up a book about one woman's Teach for America experience in 1995 as a 1st and 2nd grade teacher in Compton, meaning only to read her memoir for 10 minutes, but by the time I looked at the clock, it was 2 hours later and I was 80 pages in. Her stories were SO compelling and I have been meaning to contact her and thank her for writing her book. The stories of her students are so gripping, so tragic, and they make me scoff at my life's "problems". Her book made me feel so blessed to have been born into my social status; blessed to have attended schools that were equipped with the most basic of supplies that we take for granted: books, pencils, a functioning bathroom, asbestos-free ceilings, an incorruptible (for the most part) administration; blessed to have been raised by love and not by abuse, violence; blessed to have never witnessed a person being shot, as all the 6 year-old children in her 1st grade classroom had witnessed. 6 years old! The fact that I am writing about such a real topic that affects America's people, my fellow people, is exhilarating.

Exhilarating, exhilarating, exhilarating!