And so we begin...

Before coming to college the type of writing that we did in high school was mainly examining themes that carried through between a group of books due to a historical event that happened during the time they were written, but occasionally we did creative writing. The idea of it was interesting but was never really an entertaining way to spend an evening. Creative writing was always where I loved to spend most of my effort. In these papers we had to follow certain standards and conventions that made my writing of the essay a little less enjoyable. The reason for this, I feel, was that it was supposed to be written in a way that explicitly details every little thing and why it should be that way. I prefer leaving room for mystery, that lets the reader’s imagination take them away to a place that you explicitly describe for them, and let the story unfurl in their head. This little bit of wiggle room that research papers leave out make something that is mainly opinion into something that seems so definite and sure like math. Math is an art because it is definite and unchanging, just as English is indefinite and changing. The moment it becomes concrete I lost interest in it.
When I moved to China during my senior year I started my own blog to tell of my adventures in China. I thought I could just write down a brief synopsis of my day but I got really into it. The idea of weaving my story around the history and culture of the land became really interesting. My audience of friends and family would send me e-mails saying that history just became interesting. I felt that the way that these blogs I wrote, which I would equate more with essays, incorporated history with a story made it into something people could grasp onto. It was a style of writing that I’d never had the privilege to try out when I was confined to writing essays in school. The idea of writing for this public audience and getting their feedback was exhilarating. It made history exciting for my readers and for me, and that was just something that I never had an interest in before. When I was writing these blogs I felt like I was giving an unbiased story of the topic, whether it be an ethnic minority or a forgotten religion. Of course, it was biased, but it just felt like I trusted myself more than some of the stuff news companies were putting out. In the end despite differing views from the actual people I've talked with and the news companies, the news always keeps me up to date and is a relatively reliable source.

Sterling