Sorry In Advanced. Heated Post.

Wow. Yeah.

So just as a warning, I feel as though this blog post is about to be a rant.

Although if you read my blog frequently, you would know that already, since it’s pretty rare that I post twice a week, let alone one day right after the other, and even more out of the ordinary, on a Wednesday night.

So consider yourself forewarned.

All I want to do is write, and write with my own voice. When I wrote for Voices, the section of the Reading Eagle Newspaper written exclusively by teens, I loved the kind of articles that I could write straight from my own thoughts, without needing to do any undesired research.

Don’t get me wrong, I like research a lot, except when I do it, I don’t really think of it as research. When I like research, it’s when I’m looking something up for the benefit of my own knowledge, because I am genuinely interested in the topic. So it’s more like fun than work.

Call me lazy if you want, that’s just how I like to write—no strings attached, no need to cite sources and add quotes.

So whenever I try to do that in college—write about a topic I like and don’t necessarily need research for beyond the little that might help me to understand myself and my thoughts a little better—I get screwed over. I always get a horrible grade on it.

I mean, ok. I can sort of see how in some situations, I could have fulfilled the assignment better with another topic, and more academic research. But the writing itself would not have been as good, as purely my voice and style. Now, the professor may be happy with what I’d write as long as it perfectly fits the parameters of the project, but I wouldn’t. I want to write, in every class, with my voice. I don’t want to write to conform, to just give them what they think fulfills the assignment. I want to give them something different.

I want to write along my stream of consciousness and be satisfied that I’ve gotten my point across at least to myself; every paper that I’ve written like this has helped me get to better know myself, and helped me to work through my problems by putting them on paper. I used the assignment to get myself to write down my thoughts, as I wouldn’t take it upon myself to just sit down and write them otherwise, because I simply just wouldn’t take the time out of my schedule.

Perhaps that’s why I’m so attached to these papers, so angry that others don’t see the value that I see in them; because they’ve helped me, not them. They just want me to do the assignment, while I want to be healed in my pain. I used this as an outlet for myself, rather than just doing what they wanted.

I guess I shouldn’t do this anymore. But I can’t help but take advantage of anything that enables me to be able to get out my pain, past transgressions, and errant thoughts and work through them.

It’s how I stay sane.

~Dale B.

**Revision:
Yeah, also. I really hate that I can't explain my reasons for various decisions in papers, as is often the case in my life with my decisions in general. I mean realistically I could talk to my professors about what I was trying to do with a certain word choice or metaphor, but I've done that in the past, and I know that I would argue every point. Everyone sees things differently. I don't want to be that girl who tries to explain and argue about why she made every little decision again; it's just makes me seem annoying, and I'm getting the impression that my professors already see me like that, despite my efforts. I don't need to be that girl.