A Writing Oddysey
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My Writing Odyssey
As far back as I can remember I have always been told by educators that Im a very creative writer. My first year of high school was an
interesting time to see where my skills in English would take me. For some reason every semester in High School my progress in English would
fluctuate. Some professors assumed it could be better, some assumed it could be no better. For my first year of High School,l I attended
Jamaica High school. I can remember on the first day of English Class the Teacher handed out a book entitled “The Odyssey” by Homer, which
was translated by Samuel Butler. The homework later that day was to make a short story of our own little odyssey, and I did just that.
I wrote a story relating to the amerindians, which were people that were living in South America before the Europeans arrived, and acient
women who were sent to exile for performing certain tabus (since women didnt have much say in ancient societies) in the the Amazon rain
forest, I wrote about unusual rituals performed by the women of the amazon, like the brain surgeries, heart surgeries, and wearing the skulls of
Jaguars on their heads as helmets, I described them as having beautiful skin, cat like features, such as their eyes, and postures, and described
them as worshiping anything in the felis genus, describing statues of many kinds. I wrote about the many different healing remedies they beheld,
making them seem like witch doctors, forcing people with illnesses to try and find where in the dangerous forest they would reside in as their only
option to be cured for whatever disease. I also made my self one of the people who set out looking for them, proving an ancient legend to be
right.
When I came back with the assignment completed, the very next day I saw it up on the bulletin board. The Teacher was so flabbergasted
with my work,he made copies of it and handed it out to the class. He called me aside to offer me a chance to write for the school newspaper The
Hilltopper. I had it all in there. I wrote a short story that kept the attention span of everyone in the class. Most found the class boring, or at least
his style of teaching, but not that day. I set an example on how a creative writing assignment could be written, which we spoke about the entire
class. Not only was class interesting that day, but so was my story.
I felt as thunderstruck as Susan G. Madera, in the short story, “One Voice” since she goes through a similar situation. Not many got that
oppurtunity, which may open doors to other opportunities such as scholarships, and even getting accepted to the college of ones choice. In order
for a student to get into the journalism club, you either had to have outstanding grades, which wasnt very common in that particular school, or be
recommended by a staff member of the deparment.
I always felt English didnt have to be a number one priority since schools and programs I was interested in (dealing with the
medical,pharmaceutical, and dental field) only looked at high scores in math and science and only required satisfactory scores in English,
therefore I focused on those subjects as my strong points. Being selected to write for the school paper still gave a great recognition for getting
into good schools, but one with high math and science scores received a better recognition for acceptance, which in a way, is not fair in my
opinion, but the answers lie within the schools who requests this kind allocation.