I started college when I was 18.  It was the spring after high school graduation, OK I waited not quite a year.  I knew that college was something I was supposed to do but I was not sure what I wanted to do with my degree.  Yes, I was focused on the END not the JOURNEY. 

I took Freshman Composition I and Accounting I my first term.  I failed Accounting.  It was a little deflating since I had declared a Business major.  Lesson learned – I was not going to be a business major.

Composition was OK.  I have to say it was not one of those earth shattering, change my life classes.  In the class, I learned how to get by – do the assignment and get the grade. 

Once the spring semester was over, I sat out until the next spring semester.  In that time off, I worked, and I really thought about the value of college.  At the time, college meant not working in a warehouse.  College would mean moving forward.  To what?  I had no clue, but I knew I had to do college.

Freshman Composition II changed my attitude.  My instructor was what I know now as an “old school” English teacher.  She taught us the basics, reinforced grammar and mechanics, and made the act of writing an art we wanted to perfect.  During my time at the community college, she was the instructor who served as a mentor and inspired me to want to keep moving forward.

What I learned in that classroom is something that I have used every single day since.  Yes, writing can be a chore.  I approach that chore with the thought that I will make an art out of that chore.  By experience, I am a research writer.  I tried writing poetry and short stories but I learned I am too cognizant of the form and the perfection of the sentence, the paragraph, the final product.  Creative writing is not an art for me.  The objective, academic style…. that is my art.  That is where I put the time and attention to my task.  That is where I perfect the manipulation of words, of grammar, of form.

Twenty-two years ago, I entered a college classroom for the first time.  Except for six months after graduate school, I have been a student or an instructor in college classrooms, at times both.  What I have learned in the last 22 years is that writing is necessary and needed.  It’s a tool we use to make our culture continue.  I have also learned the hard and sometimes frustrating lesson that writing is just not art to most people.  When I teach writing, I want students to reach at least a comfort level, an appreciation, of the writing process.  My dream is that maybe one or two students see writing as an art that they can master.