First Essay

I Can Do Anything Better Than You

I have enjoyed reading and writing from a young age. As a child I read everything that I could get my hands on including books over my reading level, I think that is what made me such a strong reader and writer.

Every night before bed my mom or my dad used to read my brother and me a story. They ranged from Disney fairy tales to full-length novels. My favorite always being Cinderella, which happened to be the first book I learned how to read. Having an older brother put me ahead of many other children. From the age of two my parents said that I wanted to be able to do anything that he could do. This is what I believe drove me to learn to read and write by the age of four. I remember sitting at the kitchen table doing his homework with him, and I was always trying to know more that he did. This competitiveness still exists today in pretty much every aspect of my life.

My favorite teacher also happened to teach my brother two years prior. Her name was Mrs. Maimone, and she was one of the sweetest teachers that I have ever had, but at the same time one of the most challenging. Having taught my brother, she expected more out of me than any teacher had in the past. My brother was the perfect student, and every teacher wanted him in his or her class. He was smart and well mannered, and always was going above and beyond what was expected of him. This high expectation pushed me, and I thrived on the challenge of being better than my brother. She introduced me to more fiction novels and helped me become a better writer.

The extra attention that I received early on helped me to get into Honors English in sixth grade. This was one of the highlights of my education. Only 25 students were selected to be in honors English, and being put in honors put you on a fast track for other honors classes to come. I finally felt that I was put in a class with students that enjoyed the same things that I did, and loved the books and writing assignments that we had to do. No more book reports and presentations about what we had read, it was the first time that as a student I was asked what my opinion was on a text. My thoughts and ideas about what made it a well-written book, or what could have been done different finally mattered. This might make me sound a little on the geeky side, but reading and writing were my favorite things to do in school.

This love of reading and writing were further cultivated as I moved through school. Teacher after teacher had taught my brother since there was typically only one teacher that taught honors and AP in each subject. Every teacher who taught my brother expected just as much out of me as Mrs. Maimone had in third grade. I pushed myself harder and harder each year to live up to and even surpass their high expectations. These high expectations did not come without there consequences though.

With the amount of stress I began to feel at school to be the smartest in every class, I found that I began to stray away from my love of reading and writing. My attention shifted to anything analytical. Here I could prove that I was smarter than my brother. Math and science were simple subjects; I could easily prove myself smarter than my brother. But I couldn’t enjoy what I was doing.

This was when I discovered fiction novels. My parents had bookshelves full of books just waiting to be read, and I gladly began to sort through them one by one. This is something that I had that I didn’t have to share with my brother. He was never one to pick up a book just for fun, it made it my own, something I had accomplished first. And as I sifted through titles of books I couldn’t pronounce, and weird sci-fi stories, I found myself gravitating towards the mystery novels. There is something about the suspense and not knowing what is going to happen that keeps me intrigued. I fell in love with Mary Higgins Clark, and have grown to know her writing style. I have read almost all her books, and will even re-read them even though I know the outcome. But having one thing that my brother did not do was not enough.

The competitiveness continues throughout high school and into college I was always trying to do better than my brother, score one more goal on the soccer field, score higher on my SATs, or get a higher GPA. I think that my parents saw this as a good thing, bragging to friends and family about our high scores and college acceptance to every school we applied to, but trying to live up to a genius is hard work. To keep my head on straight I began to write.

I started to write stories at a young age. Most of my stories had to do with horses, my favorite animal. I still remember the first story I wrote, it was called Halloween Pony. I wrote it in third grade under the watchful eye of Mrs. Maimone, and I still have it to this day on my bookshelf at home. I have never been one to keep a diary or journal, but instead express myself by writing poems and songs. I think this stemmed from my love of mystery novels, because I wanted to be creative, even if what I was writing was not suspenseful. I love sitting down at my computer or curling up in my bed and just writing. The best place to write is outside; my deck swing is a particular favorite place of mine. When I am writing it is one of the only times that I am not distracted. I love the sound of the keys on my lab top or the light scratching sound a pen makes on paper. To me this is comforting, something that blocks off all else that is going on around me, and allows me to just be me.

I write when I am angry or upset, but rarely when I am happy. I found that my brother often made me angry, and writing about it helped me realize that he wasn’t the one always causing these feelings. Putting my thoughts down became my way of dealing with my emotions. I have learned over the years that writing when I am happy does not yield the same quality of work as when I am feeling internal turmoil. This may strike some as strange, but to me, putting my emotions on paper keeps me from using them in a hurtful way. I have found that when I write these feelings down I can go back at a different time and read it, and be able to control my emotions. Writing poems and songs also allows me to freely write without having to think or control what I am putting down in words. I feel that writing in this way allows me to be creative and enjoy what I am doing.

What I do not like to write is pieces with specific guidelines. I especially hate papers that teachers assign topics too. Writing shouldn’t be about who has the best style and grammar, and who can put information down on paper in their own words. It should be about writing something that is meaningful to you, and about learning something. But writing about a topic that is of no interest to you is extremely difficult. Doing research and writing papers about topics that are relevant to a specific class are needed, but it is not the easiest type of writing for me to complete. I feel that I cannot lend myself to certain topics in which I have no emotion about, or that I am not in the slightest bit interested in.

This is one of the poems that I wrote:

Blank pages

Empty faces

A clean slate?

Or an empty heart

Is it possible not to hate?

To feel this feeling

To keep it locked inside

Not helping my healing

To suppress

This hatred I harbor

When writing comes from inside I find that I can express myself better than any other way. When I’m submerged in writing, whether its mine or another authors, I find that I am in a different place. I find comfort in the peace I get from reading and writing. It allows me to get away from the every day competitiveness I feel and express my feelings. What is better than finding what makes you happy?