I remember when I used to study in Mexico, I finished my third grade over there.

I was
eight at that time, I remember we had a little library in the elementary school I used to attend.
They just had like three shelves my size with about 20 or less books on each shelf. The teachers
used to takes us there every Friday. Thats pretty much how my story starts. I hated going to that
library, I hated that my teacher, Mrs. Sol, would make us read. I hate it. I despised it with such
a passion. It was not until the ending of second grade when our teacher stopped taking us to the
library because she had bought herself a book that she wanted to read to us. I clearly remember
the name of the book for it haunted me as a kid. Sangre de Campeon (Blood of a champion).
When she made the announcement that she was going to start reading to us, my whole class
moaned in disapproval. How did she dared to do such thing to us? Wasnt it enough punishment
to take us to the library every Friday? Now she was going to start reading this stupid book to us.
Oh how we hated her. And we were a big class, like 30 to 35 kids so she didnt have fans of her
own. Anyways, she started torturing us.
As soon as she started reading us that book I was completely sure that, that stupid book
with its annoying title was going to change my life forever. I couldnt get enough of it. I looked
forward to Fridays when Mrs. Sol would sit on her stool and start reading one more chapter of
that amazing book. Suddenly without notice the school year ended, and my third grade teacher
didnt finish reading the book for us. I couldnt go back to her class because that was the year my
dad decided to move to El Paso. I never knew what the ending of that book was, and the
possibilities of it haunted me in my dreams, and in my daily living. Thats when all of this
reading and writing stuff started hitting me. The trauma of that ghostly ending followed me
everywhere and by trying to find a refuge of that nightmare I started reading whatever book I
could find, and writing little notes about what I liked the most of those books that reached out for
me.
So we can say that my third grade teacher inspired me to read in a very unusual way.
And, with my desire to read everything I could get a hold of (even cereal boxes), also came my
desire to write everything that invaded my mind. So I started writing in little notebooks,
notepads, post its, etc. and I remember thinking I could become a writer when I grew up, but then
with the moving to El Paso and the change in education, my artistic life came to a boom.
Teachers here were stricter, and I swear they came up with the weirdest grammatical rules. I
hated it. So in a way I suspended my writing career and thought about going back to it when the
rules werent so strict or stupid as they seemed to me.
And that was the last time I wrote an essay without following the rules. Actually one of
my final rebellious essay won third place in my new third grade class here in El Paso. I was so
proud of myself when I used to walk through the main hallway at school, because my essay was
hanged in one of the walls. Then I just started sucking. I concentrated all of my effort at the rules
they imposed to my writing that I completely forgot about the joy of writing yourself out. And,
more repercussions came with it. I got rid of my imagination and creativity, I could no longer
listen to my inner voice telling me that my essay needed more, more of me.
Like Malcolm X says in his autobiography I never had been so truly free in my life. I
had forgotten the freedom literature brings, instead it became a snowball of stress, getting bigger
and bigger the harder I tried to write. I had forgotten how writing with your heart felt like, and
the only thing I could come up with was shitty final drafts that up until high school could not
give me a grade higher than a C. Then I read Anne Lammots point of view on shitty first drafts,
I understand now that almost all good writing beings with terrible first efforts. That little
sentence made me understand so much about how I felt about my essays from high school. I
wasnt giving the best of me on those essays.
I had many mistakes besides following a hierarchy of useless rules, and suppressing all
creativity from it, but the one that affected me the most was that I didnt look forward to writing
an essay, nevertheless to revise what I had just written because well, everything was just so
robotic and to the point, so why should I have to revise and change some words here or there just
so that it would sound like I was smart and knew my facts. So I just tended to write a first draft
and turn in a first draft as my final draft and that was about it. I never understood the revising as
a function of a theory of writing which makes revision both superfluous and redundant (Nancy
Sommers, pg. 578,579). And, its true, everything that Nancy Sommers says, about not giving
that flavor to our work. I stopped trying to beautify my work since thinking about how to follow
the rules while writing was already too hard and tiring. If I wanted to get my point straight how
could I be thinking of adding extended metaphors or details to my writing?
Then Mrs. Vasquez tagged along, and suddenly it was spring again in my desire to write.
She taught me almost everything I needed to know, and maybe I have a horrible memory and
cant remember half of the stuff she taught me but she was the first teacher to never bring down
my work, to never ridicule it in front of a class, to never use it as this is what you shouldnt do.
She had this teaching strategy that helped you believe in yourself for at least those 45 minutes of
class. Her spontaneity and passion for literature made me think that there is more to writing than
just boring rules.
I started writing in my journal again, freely writing in my journal again. I know Im not
the best writer in the world, and I dont want to be the best writer in the world. I just like writing,
especially when speech becomes impossible (Nancy Sommers, pg. 579). I dont think any
innovation or technology will ever compare to the art of writing. Theres just too much to it.