“The question I usually ask my students at this point is, do you actually enjoy school?

The question cut deep into how I was feeling. It was a question I had turned over and over in my

mind several times previously, but hearing it be stated directly, without soft tones or corporate

language, truly made me confront the answer. To my relief, I knew the answer was that I did. I

told my coordinator that yes, I truly did enjoy school, but that it was writing itself that was what I

disliked. Little excited me more than going to class, learning about new topics that I could

connect to and deepen my previous knowledge, open up new explanations and theories for how

things worked and why they did. It was always the dreaded advent of the first essay in these

classes that I would dread. Quizzes, tests, exams, none of these would bother me, because I knew

I could absorb the information, and apply it to complete the thoughts of another, to serve as a

collaborator to an existing mind. But something about the essay always unsettled me.

Alone in my thoughts, I am able to move and deviate as I choose, move past a half-baked

thought, swept away as my mind raced to the next topic. To write something down was to be

confronted with my own thoughts, to subject me and my thoughts to the same critical framework

that I applied to everything else, and this terrifies me. This fear, the fear of being perceived, is

one which has permeated much of my experience. The world is vast and beautiful, but that

expansiveness is terrifying to me, especially to perceive oneself in such vastness. In reading a

text or hearing a lecture, I am able to externalize the subject matter, see it as something which I

am divorced from. In placing ink to paper or finger to key, I am forced to confront my own part

in this process.

The drafting process is no small part of this repulsion. Of course no one is ever

functioning at 100% capacity, but in our minds, we are processing too much to dwell on this fact.

To draft and edit is to admit to oneself that one is fallible, and this is something that I, in my
immaturity, resent. My fears of perception played in here as well, because if I needed to improve

my work every time I wrote, how would I ever be satisfied with the final product? Would

everything I write amount to banging my head into a deadline, accepting what was there as final?

Obviously these questions are extreme when talking about a paper asking to explain the effects

of the Qin dynasty, but if my problems with writing ran so deep, I wanted the fruits of my

engagement with the process to be as great as possible.

However, I also acknowledge the immaturity which lies at the heart of this hand-

wringing. Of course nothing I do will ever be “perfect,” for nothing ever is. I am simply being

obstinate in refusing to accept this idea in my perception. I have no problem acknowledging the

positives in other, flawed works, it is my own, flawed perspective that I can do better than the

entirety of human experience which prevents me from doing so. Breaking down this toxic

approach is challenging, but the first step is always acknowledging the problem. Only by putting

myself on display can I learn to quiet the voice which tells me to hide it away.

But these rationalizations of my feelings towards the writing process would come later.

Right now, I thought back on my experiences, and I answered my coordinator, “Yes, I really like

learning and reading, it’s just writing that is hard for me.”

“So what’s hard about this assignment for you?” she asked. I shifted in my seat,

pondering my answer.

“Well, it’s like, an origin story assignment, about an experience that helps you to tell a

narrative about your experience with education and the writing process, and I don’t really have a

good story to use for it.”

“Well..” she said, pausing as I began to predict what she would say next. “Why not use

this talk?”