global-wolf
Smash Champion
Link to original post: [drupal=4884]Brick Walls[/drupal]
I just went through a bunch of stored-away items in my basement. My motivation for this was to find a measuring tape, because I wanted to see what size I was for a website's clothing. I ended up finding an assortment of things that I had completely forgotten about, including erasers, hairclips, pencil pouches, and art. There were also a stack of papers from various TJ (a magnet school) prep classes. These were from 7th grade to early 8th grade. Some of the doodles on them made me seriously appreciate my improvement since. I looked through some of them, then I opened a binder that contained the assignments from one particular writing class. I will never forget that class. It shaped my writing in significant ways (thought I am not sure if I still keep those changes.)
I read the first essay, a response to a prompt stating that brick walls exist to let us show how much we want something, and asking us to write about what brick walls have been in our life. This is from the fall of 8th grade, which was 2 years ago. I will copy it here:
[collapse=Brick Walls]There is nothing in my life that I metaphorically associate with brick walls. I understand the meaning of the quote, but I do not think it is a very good one.
First of all, the only reason for a real brick wall is to show boundary lines; to keep people out. There is no reason for a person meeting a brick wall to want something, except to get to the other side, and for that there are gates; if there are no gates, then the person can walk around the wall. The reason for using brick walls in the quote is because brick walls are supposedly solid and unyielding. That does not support what the quote said about showing "how badly we want something." The closest brick walls come to the quote is "keeping us from getting what we want."
The only relation I have with brick walls is the tiny one in front of my house. It is two feet high, and certainly as not made me want anything. [/collapse]
Underneath it the teacher of the writing class wrote a couple sentences of how she enjoyed my contrariness, and that she believed that the teachers at TJ would love having me in their classes.
While I was copying the whole thing, I kept thinking about how my perceptions of metaphors and meanings has changed since then. I don't remember the last time I thought of "brick wall" as a bad metaphor. In my recent memory, brick walls have stood for what they were intended to stand for. I remember a few months ago I was thinking back to this essay, and I knew I had a very good reason for thinking what I did, but I couldn't remember for my life why exactly the brick wall metaphor was so bad.
Even now as I read it again, I struggle to understand what I had said. And even more than that, I wonder at how swiftly I had to managed to arrive at my conclusion. My perspective of things has changed hugely since I wrote the essay; I can see that my viewpoint then dove into the core of meanings, and while I believe my viewpoint now still does that, there are more bridges and more layers of film that cover up holes in the skeleton. (Just by using these metaphors I am showing the difference in my thought. I had a dislike of most metaphors when I was younger because I would see all the problems with them.)
My writing then was extremely calculated. I was never a natural writer, but I could recognize incongruous ideas and bad sentence structures. So I would painstakingly formulate my sentences to say exactly what I needed in the shortest amount of lines possible. That characteristic of my writing has stayed with me up until maybe as recently as a month ago. But while my clogged-up flow of ideas to paper didn't change, my clarity of view did. I would still take five minutes just to come up with a single sentence, but each sentence would be short and ugly and disconnected. Because I was BS'ing everything. I did not have the understanding to write something meaningful, and I did not have the skill to write something beautiful.
My teachers in the writing classes had thought I was a wonderful writer, but for unexplained reasons people connected to school did not. I always got papers back with "B" on them and no explanation of why. (One teacher even told me my tense agreement was bad, and would not tell me where.) I got only a passing score on standardized writing tests. I didn't get in TJ because of the writing part of the application, because it obviously wasn't the testing part (I got 97/100 and people with scores in the 70's got in.) And now my current English teacher gives me a B on a paper that I worked 8 hours on, and then tells my dad I am a good writer. I don't get it. Now I'm starting to not care if my ideas are hole-free and my sentences perfect, so I can write more.
I think my train of thought has now totally gone off track. It is rumbling off into the woods and I don't wish to bring it back.
I just went through a bunch of stored-away items in my basement. My motivation for this was to find a measuring tape, because I wanted to see what size I was for a website's clothing. I ended up finding an assortment of things that I had completely forgotten about, including erasers, hairclips, pencil pouches, and art. There were also a stack of papers from various TJ (a magnet school) prep classes. These were from 7th grade to early 8th grade. Some of the doodles on them made me seriously appreciate my improvement since. I looked through some of them, then I opened a binder that contained the assignments from one particular writing class. I will never forget that class. It shaped my writing in significant ways (thought I am not sure if I still keep those changes.)
I read the first essay, a response to a prompt stating that brick walls exist to let us show how much we want something, and asking us to write about what brick walls have been in our life. This is from the fall of 8th grade, which was 2 years ago. I will copy it here:
[collapse=Brick Walls]There is nothing in my life that I metaphorically associate with brick walls. I understand the meaning of the quote, but I do not think it is a very good one.
First of all, the only reason for a real brick wall is to show boundary lines; to keep people out. There is no reason for a person meeting a brick wall to want something, except to get to the other side, and for that there are gates; if there are no gates, then the person can walk around the wall. The reason for using brick walls in the quote is because brick walls are supposedly solid and unyielding. That does not support what the quote said about showing "how badly we want something." The closest brick walls come to the quote is "keeping us from getting what we want."
The only relation I have with brick walls is the tiny one in front of my house. It is two feet high, and certainly as not made me want anything. [/collapse]
Underneath it the teacher of the writing class wrote a couple sentences of how she enjoyed my contrariness, and that she believed that the teachers at TJ would love having me in their classes.
While I was copying the whole thing, I kept thinking about how my perceptions of metaphors and meanings has changed since then. I don't remember the last time I thought of "brick wall" as a bad metaphor. In my recent memory, brick walls have stood for what they were intended to stand for. I remember a few months ago I was thinking back to this essay, and I knew I had a very good reason for thinking what I did, but I couldn't remember for my life why exactly the brick wall metaphor was so bad.
Even now as I read it again, I struggle to understand what I had said. And even more than that, I wonder at how swiftly I had to managed to arrive at my conclusion. My perspective of things has changed hugely since I wrote the essay; I can see that my viewpoint then dove into the core of meanings, and while I believe my viewpoint now still does that, there are more bridges and more layers of film that cover up holes in the skeleton. (Just by using these metaphors I am showing the difference in my thought. I had a dislike of most metaphors when I was younger because I would see all the problems with them.)
My writing then was extremely calculated. I was never a natural writer, but I could recognize incongruous ideas and bad sentence structures. So I would painstakingly formulate my sentences to say exactly what I needed in the shortest amount of lines possible. That characteristic of my writing has stayed with me up until maybe as recently as a month ago. But while my clogged-up flow of ideas to paper didn't change, my clarity of view did. I would still take five minutes just to come up with a single sentence, but each sentence would be short and ugly and disconnected. Because I was BS'ing everything. I did not have the understanding to write something meaningful, and I did not have the skill to write something beautiful.
My teachers in the writing classes had thought I was a wonderful writer, but for unexplained reasons people connected to school did not. I always got papers back with "B" on them and no explanation of why. (One teacher even told me my tense agreement was bad, and would not tell me where.) I got only a passing score on standardized writing tests. I didn't get in TJ because of the writing part of the application, because it obviously wasn't the testing part (I got 97/100 and people with scores in the 70's got in.) And now my current English teacher gives me a B on a paper that I worked 8 hours on, and then tells my dad I am a good writer. I don't get it. Now I'm starting to not care if my ideas are hole-free and my sentences perfect, so I can write more.
I think my train of thought has now totally gone off track. It is rumbling off into the woods and I don't wish to bring it back.
My thoughts on those are... odd.
