Tschudy 1 Aubree Tschudy Professor Brand English 1010 8 August 2013 Nancy Drugan Your friends and family

ily are the first level of socialization everyone has in their life. With this being said they are usually the most influential people who shape both your ideologies and beliefs. Therefore, when Nancy Drugan entered my life and changed everything I thought to be true about the literary world you can imagine my confusion. My world was turned upside down when she quickly became the most influential person in my life. I first scheduled a class with Nancy by freak accident my sophomore year of High School for an English class. Everyone told me she was a horrible teacher, an impossible class to pass, weird, and annoying because she talked out of the side of her mouth. With a reputation like that, you can imagine I was anything but excited to be spending a semester in her classroom. Almost everything proved to be true her class was hard to pass because she expected you to put in a little bit of effort into your weekly assignments. She wasnt weird she was eccentric like an English teacher should be she reminded me a lot of Mrs. Frizzle from The Magic School Bus series. However, despite what everyone had to say about her, I loved her, our energy seemed to feed off each other and if she had told me to walk off a cliff, I would have blindly listened. Her passion for teaching sparked my long lost love for the literary world that had been slowly killed by years of teachers who would rather be teaching a different subject. Nancy was one of the hardest graders I ever had she

Tschudy 2 came with list of vague words ten miles long that she would deduct points for using. Then if that wasnt enough she also came with list of sentence structures and how many she expected you to use in each paper or each paragraph. On top of the extensive reading and writing she would give she also gave weekly vocabulary words anywhere between twenty and thirty a week. If that wasnt enough then came the vocabulary assignments to do including vocabulary sentences using her sentence structure sheets. Not to mention her extensive reading lists and assignments, which due to my lack of punctuation and grammar knowledge posed a serious problem. After the first major writing assignment was due, I realized that Nancy and I were going to be seeing a lot more of each other outside of class if I wanted to receive a decent grade in her class. Just as her notes in the margins had said, my paper was amazing but the structural errors compromised the readability. I had no idea what she meant until I went to her during a lunch hour and she read my paper aloud as it was written. She did not pause or stop until there was a coma or period to tell her so. This was the first lesson in what we would being to call our writing boot camp, which I desperately needed, and still to this day desperately need. We would meet once or twice a week from then on, she would proof read all of my assignments while helping me on punctuation and grammar, as well as discuss her heavy reading lists. At one point she would explain to me she makes her students read so much because the more you read the better you write. You will start to mimic the writers youre reading and in return you develop your own style and flare. She was right because the more I read for her class the more I watched my writing style evolve coupled with out boot camp sessions in a few short weeks my whole writing capability had changed. Papers I had written the previous semester now seemed like I had written them

Tschudy 3 when I was five. Nevertheless, what I really enjoyed was that Nancy always told me how I have such an amazing gift for writing when I am actually committed to writing but I just need to work on my technical skills so people can understand what I am trying to convey. With Nancys support and guidance she helped me find my love for writing again but with her newly taught skills I was writing in a way I never thought imaginable. The more I read the more my writing improved instead of dreading the weekly writing assignments I began to embrace them and use the sentence variation as a chance to try new writing styles and techniques but eventually I realized with the help of Nancy that I should write a Memoir. With her support and guidance, I began the hardest task I was ever going to face but one of the most beneficial experiences of my life. She gave me the courage to tell the stories of my childhood I wouldnt even tell my parents. She read and edited my work with nonjudgmental eyes and never once tried to pry for information I was not willing to give. There came a point where we had come to present-day proceedings of the main topic of my Memoir and I wasnt able to finish the writings. Without Nancy, I would not have had the courage in the first place to put pen to paper and write my story. I would not have been able to let someone into the tragedy that was my life at the time and no one would have heard my side of the events. Nancy changed my life and my view of writing that year, because without her I never would have had the courage to tell my story. I learned the value of writing that year and the value holds true to this day. Writing is a way to tell your story so people can see the world though your eyes and understand the events leading up to a point in their entirety not just from the outside looking in.

Tschudy 4 I made a drastic revision to my paper and in doing so I went a completely different direction with my paper instead of outlining all the events that shaped me as a writer I took specifically one person and one small series of events that taught me the value of writing. This strengthened my whole paper because the thought process is clearer and more concise. There is not useless verbiage and in completely eliminating all the useless story line the reader and myself included doesnt get confused when jumping from topic to topic because now there is one clear story line instead of six. The person who edited my paper suggested I pick one or two topics instead of having a ton of useless experiences explained when everyone going through school had similar experiences. Im not sure of the overall strength of my draft overall because from the beginning I was not a fan of this writing topic because despite a few random memories like one the one Im submitting I dont remember ever not liking to read or write so my story goes in a completely different direction than most. I never had an epiphany that helped me understand the value of reading because I knew from an early age that reading was one of the most important abilities in life because my parents would tell me that over and over again. Therefore, I had to go with the moment where I realized why people love to write and the moment I realized the value and immensity of getting your experiences across.