Glad that's all figured out

I'm weirdly self-conscious about how I write on here. I feel like I come off sounding really superficial. And I use a lot of stupid cliched phrases and try to sound overly dramatic. And I only use about 100 of the words in my vocabulary. And this matters to me. Because I'm dumb. Let me tell a funny story, and be a nerd and psycho-analyze myself for a second.

Really Long Part 1:
Back in the dark ages of my life (I have never referred to them in such a way...it fits) I thought I was thee. worst. writer. inthehistoryoftheworld. Why? Because I had this super-awesome fantastic really and truly wonderful student (let me make that emphasis) teacher for english class, who flat out told me my writing was the most terrible thing she had ever seen/read. She would criticize me over every other word I wrote, and write lengthy paragraphs in red pen all over my papers about how awful it was. She even did this over tiny details in simple rough drafts for lame small assignments. For example: "you put an extra comma in the middle of this sentence that did not need to be there. therefore, your writing is awful. Your vocabulary is very limited. This wasn't long enough. The final copy is to be 3 pages long." (Umm, that's why it's a rough draft lady.) "Why did you put an exclamation point at the end of that sentence? It should've been a period. You have too many paragraphs, were you trying to make it look longer than it actually is? You should have used the word 'plethora' instead of 'abundance'. Your hand writing is sloppy, I can't even read it. If you don't improve your writing, you will fail your SATs. There's no chance you're getting into college. It sounds like a 5-year-old wrote this paper. It looks like it too. I tried so hard and couldn't begin to figure out what you were even trying to say, or what the point of all this rambling was." (Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot the main idea you assigned us to write and was rambling on about the plot of my favorite movie, my bad) "Everyone else understands that you need a main idea when you write a paper, but you haven't seemed to grasp that concept yet, because I didn't find one. Haven't you been taught that in english class since like the 2nd grade? I took the liberty of crossing out about half of what you wrote, because it was trash. You need to start over completely. I can't believe you're in 11th grade and passed a class with writing like this. Maybe you should be in the applied class; your writing is nowhere close to the other students' in this class."

No joke. And then after writing all that, she would call me back to the desk while everyone was quietly working and tell me the same things and insult me even more. And while everyone else was finishing up and handing in their papers, I had to start over and work on it over the weekend and hand it in late...for a measly 20-point assignment.

Looking back, I totally admire all those kids that spent their time in ISS because they stood up for themselves and did what they felt like. But no, back then I thought those kids were terrifying and bad and disrespectful to our wonderful nice teachers. HA. Then-me sat there and took the criticism, and the unfair grading and poor grades on my report card, and held back tears, and slipped further and further into a depression that I wouldn't realize I suffered from for another 3-4 years. That rhymed. Now-me would at least have punched that woman in the face and said a few choice words good little religious girls shouldn't. And sat in ISS feeling like a queen sitting on a throne for doing it.

So why did she treat me like that, do you ask? Well, I can't say for sure. I do know that she was a little 21-year-old cougar and liked to openly and obnoxiously flirt with my then-boyfriend during class (to the point everyone else noticed it and discussed it constantly). And she praised every sentence and word and letter and punctuation mark that kid wrote. To this day I remember walking down the hall with him to the band hall for a different class, in tears because of another failing grade and more harsh words from that woman. And it ended in a big argument in which he scolded me and made me feel worse, telling me I was just jealous because for once he had found something he was good at, and he was better than me. And I was such a bad person for putting him down, insulting him, and thinking I needed to be better than him at everything. And maybe I should just come to grips with the fact that I'm not a good writer and she's trying to help me (blahblahblah, bs bs bs, I'm a manipulative jerkface). Hahahahaha...he was such a gem.

Happy ending to that story, after Christmas time she was gone, my grades jumped up dramatically and I got high A's in that class, I took the SAT the following spring, got a 1270 or something, and a 4 out of 6 on my essay section. The better-writer-than-me bf got a 3. And, though it sucked at the time, it makes for a pretty awesome story to tell, write in my blog, and laugh like crazy about.

Really Short Part 2:
Because of all of that, I started at Millersville thinking I wouldn't do better than a C average. After all, it was engrained in my head that I was the world's worst writer. But I tried my best. Turns out, according to college professors with PhD's and years of experience, I'm a pretty darn good writer. And modest, too. With the exception of the hard time I had with my spanish classes (hello, 3.75 gpa and crappy spanish-speaking skills, goodbye 4.0 and zip spanish knowledge), I was at the top of my classes. And when it came to paper-writing, not once did I get a paper handed back to me that didn't have some comment from the prof of how well I write. For awhile I didn't believe it. Then there was a period of time where I had a huge head about it and thought I was such a smarty.

And now here I sit. Confused as to what sort of writer I am, or what level I'm at. But in writing this post I've begun to realize something. I don't care. Some might think my writing is crap. Some might love it. Maybe my vocab does suck. Because I used 'suck' and not some other word to describe it. I might have a PhD one day and still describe a bug as 'icky'. I work with kids, what do you expect? It's a good word to describe something; it gets the point across. I'm not speaking to impress people and sound important with my big words. I'm speaking to be understood. Maybe my words and phrases sound cliche and overdramatic. If you think so, too bad. I'm trying to express how I feel. And I might not be the best at it in writing, but it's me.