Writing autobiography

The first memories that I have of my writing do not involve the substance and style of the words that were written on the paper. These memories center around the struggle to form the letters used to write those words and how the teacher was more concerned with my inability to display good handwriting. That was second grade and a time when I scored my lowest grade, a C in handwriting, that I would receive until college.
Junior high school introduced me to an English teacher that I would spend three years with writing and rewriting papers. Mr. Warren was one of those English teachers that believed that diagramming sentences was a fun way to spend an afternoon. He surely had unlimited access to red ink pens, and he showed tendencies of being addicted to the smell of the red ink. Every paper that I turned in came back to me looking more like a Christmas decoration than a serious academic piece. There was no doubt that whatever the caliber of work the first draft of an assignment happened to be, the end result would be a sea of red ink and many future drafts that would have to be written. I do not jest when I say that six revisions of the same paper would be the norm. There would be a few students in the class that could get by with four or five, but I stayed in the largest group of students that required six revisions before the paper was considered worthy of a grade. In retrospect, the biggest lesson that I learned from Mr. Warren was that all writing could be endlessly revised and revamped. The end product is usually better than the initial offering. I also learned that though the papers would stop finding their way back into my backpack as a homework assignment eventually, this process was much quicker when I became more proficient in proofreading my own work and learned to anticipate the errors I regularly made and fix them before turning in the paper in the first place. “Awkward- revise!” was probably one of my least favorite phrases that appeared above sentences that said what needed to be communicated but were not structured succinctly and pleasing to the reader. While I despised the man and his incessant markings at the time, I do now believe that writing in schools now suffers because this is a lost practice.
It’s odd that my high school years are fuzzy as I try to recollect teachers and class assignments that helped me grow as a writer. I know that I churned out papers in high school, but I cannot recall a single incident where I needed more than one draft to get a grade. There was a state writing test during my high school years where I received a score of a 2.5 out of 4. The two scorers of the paper disagreed on the score of the paper.
The one class in high school that probably added more to my ability to write than any others during this time period was typing class. While I would not reap the benefits of this class until college, probably no other single class in my life has helped my ability to write more than learning to type and word process. The reason that this class had little impact in high school was that papers were still handwritten. It would be several more years before I could unleash the potential of this new technology in a way that would impact routine class assignments.
My first year in college opened my eyes to the need to become machine-like in my writing. It was not uncommon in English 101 to have 3-5 page papers due on a routine basis. Most of the papers were reflections on material that inspired me little to read it, much less write about it. What these assignments did accomplish was allow me to utilize my word processing skills. I was able to use words that I could not spell with out a dictionary, find synonyms to words without hunting down a thesaurus, and use the cut/paste capabilities to my heart’s content. This was quite a liberating experience! Grammar checks found awkward sentences before they could make their way onto a professor’s desk. I felt like my writing improved because I was in much more command of my ability to revise my own work more efficiently. The act of typing also has some sort of liberating quality for me. I find that when I type papers, I am much more focused on the content of the writing. I have compared papers that were handwritten first and papers that were initially created through word processing. For whatever reason, my writing is much better when I type the paper even when I know that it is a draft version.
Part of the machine-like writing I did was my own fault. I would wait until the last minute to write the paper and then rely on my lightning fast typing ability and natural intelligence to get me through. There were many late nights and early mornings where I sat down at a computer and hit the print button on a 5 page paper an hour or two later. The other part of it is the way that college is structured. All papers seem to come due at the same time. Term papers due at the middle and end of a semester. Paper after paper was typed at a frantic pace to pacify professors and fill the course requirements. Most professors were not concerned with improving my writing; they were only concerned with placing a value on what the paper had to say. One turning point in college involved my English 102 professor. He told me that I had potential to be a good writer. He actually spent some time on several occasions meeting with me to help improve my writing. Most of the conversations were centered on writing for a particular audience. His biggest critique of my writing was that I wrote the way I talked. I have never forgotten those conversations or the importance of writing for the audience that will be reading the paper. English professors are interested in a different type of writing than science or math professors. I once received a couple of points for my attempt at humor on a biology essay question, but that professor was obviously looking for substance that style and sentence structure could not overcome.
Graduate school has certainly improved my ability as a writer both because of the quantity of writing required and the quality of writings that I have read. Reading high quality writing provides me with a model that I can pattern myself after. I feel that I can, at times, write alongside of people that are published. Sometimes I read articles and books that I have trouble typing direct quotes for papers because of the complexity of the sentences and thoughts.
As a principal, I have to write for varying audiences on regular basis. I write recommendations, reprimands, newsletters, news releases, and formal observation summaries on a regular basis. I have learned to rely on others to help me with much of this writing, though some of it cannot be shared with others. I always have some teachers read my news releases and parent newsletters. They help me to see when I am writing over the heads of my parents and when I need to explain things in more detail. I find it a complement that my writing is at such a level that I am told regularly that I need to write in a way that more parents will be able to understand and use words that are so “fancy”. I have not been accused of writing the way I talk for a long time.