Audio essay

The relationship between writing and an individual is crucial for personal growth. The places where we learn to write leave lasting impressions. The speaker's journey as a writer began in their hometown, where they learned the English language and were inspired by literature. Their room as a teenager became an office where they completed various writing assignments. Classrooms and their experiences in them also shaped their writing skills. Finally, their current college dorm is where they foresee themselves writing many assignments. All these places hold memories and have influenced the person and writer they have become. The relationship between writing language and an individual is a key part of each person's journey in life. As we all embark on that journey, the places where we develop each leave their own unique impressions upon us. My own personal journey, places that come to my mind as I think about myself and my journey and development as a writer include my hometown where I learned to read and write, my room as a teenager where I spent hours grinding essays, inside all of my prior classrooms and here in my college dorm where I can already foresee myself typing pages and pages worth of assignments. Even when we don't realize it at the time, our experiences and backgrounds shape who we are and language is no different. In my hometown, a suburb of San Francisco, I remember learning the basis for everything I would use in the English language. I remember my first real experiences with literature and the English language when my parents read the entirety of the Harry Potter series to me and my older sister. Just a young kid who couldn't have read it on my own in a million years, it fascinated me. And even when my interest in learning the language at school faltered, I still looked forward to the opportunity to curl up in my parents' bed and read those books. I remember in second grade, they tried to make us learn cursive because that was obviously how everyone would write in the near future and I could hardly write anything legible in print. It didn't go well, but the effort and time I spent with it was critical in establishing my abilities with the written word. It also made me push to have much better normal handwriting so I wouldn't be forced into more cursive. I would sit at our dining room table for what felt like eternity just trying to get it down. In that house I haven't even seen in years, I still know every corner, every space to crawl and hide in it, and all the rooms where I became me. There are parts I don't remember, like my first word that allegedly happened on the couch and the first time I wrote my name. But I know that those walls were a key piece of my life. While I may have become the same writer I am today learning to write in another house or town, I was there and it holds memories of both my personal life and language development that nowhere else would feel right with. Each room throughout the house, each desk in the school I went to, and every street winding through are still etched in my brain, especially when I consider my history as a writer as it is where it all started. As a teenager when my schoolwork really started to require large amounts of writing, my room became an office of sorts for me for all types of work. I had tons of quick and simple assignments where I simply had to write a paragraph at most or a couple sentences to answer a question which I would just churn out left and right every week. Final papers, especially in my senior year, I'd spend weeks procrastinating and cramming through in one night to meet the word count, or in one case to get back down below the max. We're all done laying on my bed or sitting at my desk. I created my first resume in that room, in hindsight a colossal waste of effort for a terrible job, but a pivotal moment in my life nonetheless. No matter what it was, though, all my writing ended up getting done from within the confines of those walls covered in posters and pictures and with random crap littered all over the floor. With the privacy allowed, I would be blasting music while churning out words for my IB internal assessments and staying up well past when I should have gone to sleep to get stuff done. Even though I would tell my friends I hated it and that we were getting too much work, whatever I was complaining about that week, I had fun in there just getting stuff done. That messy makeshift office that lacked every essence of professionalism you would see in an office was a refuge, and in the safety of that I was able to accomplish all of the biggest writing projects I've had in my life. As well, I have distinct memories of classrooms I've sat in from my time learning how to write until recently, when I've sat in classrooms doing nothing but writing. There are many I've sat in throughout the years, but just a few of them truly stand out in my memories. Sitting in a classroom that was inside a trailer as a 6th grader who just moved to Mexico City, not speaking a lick of Spanish, and having every word just go in one ear and out the other with what was likely a look of both confusion and horror on my face. That room had a lot of bad memories for me, only exasperated by the lack of air conditioning, but as my three years of school there went on, and I stayed in that room, my skills picked up and over time I had a new language in my back pocket. Writing in Spanish became second nature, and my cramped little seat in that room had a lot to do with that. By 9th grade I'd moved away, but had new classrooms that had many of the same horrors as those of the past. My English class that year was in a nice room with windows and natural light and a lot of space between tables. There I took the next step in my journey with language as essays and reports became the norm and I learned to cite sources and more than just a link at the bottom. Sitting in that room with my writing partner I was assigned, both our writing and a bond developed as this language class gave me both newfound writing skills and a close friend. With the easygoing environment of the room, some days when I had to get work done I would go to that classroom, just sitting there to finish up my work. With that class and room were vital pieces to me becoming the writer I am today, having established key elements and formats that I still go back to today. The last classroom I remember vividly was less of a classroom and more of a room outside my class, as teachers in my final two years of high school usually just sent us out to go wherever we wanted to do the work. Without fail I would go with a few of my friends there. Sitting there, while often not focused on the task at hand, I did accomplish a lot. I wrote my Common App essay in that room that in a way shaped my future and I wrote pieces of final papers there as well. These cramped spaces I spent years resenting shaped me in ways I couldn't have imagined, especially as a writer as I picked up skills, little quirks and techniques in my writing style that are still present to this day. Now I think of this dorm room where I'm currently writing this very draft and wrote the expansions it was built from. Whether it will stay right here as the future place I think about writing or shift to another area such as a library, I know that the writing I will do will have the same style of experiences of those of my past and that location will be a memorable piece of that experience as a writer. In here I'm able to write with a lot of peace in my mind, similar to my old bedroom, with music blasting as I simultaneously relax. I also know that here is where a lot of my procrastinating my writing will take place, as just seen today when I spent about four hours just thinking about starting to write something and not doing it until recently, when I finally started to put my head down and get it done. Sitting on a cheap little futon from Target and chugging energy drinks while my roommate stumbles around doing whatever it is he does, I see myself typing page after page on essays for all my classes and responding to discussion boards weekly. I foresee myself under a blanket during the winter in a safe haven from the cold on my Californian skin, with nowhere else to go without freezing to death to finish off my various assignments from my classes. Inside of this school, this building, inside these walls is the place where I will become the writer that I've always had the potential to become, but haven't yet realized. While my life has been some sort of a roller coaster to experience, especially when I didn't enjoy it, it has shaped me into the person and writer I am today. The ghosts of where I've been and who I've met follow me in every key press and word spoken, as our language is nothing more than a reflection of ourselves.