Author: camila (Page 1 of 3)

I have always struggled with my english and writing classes. It was never a subject I enjoyed learning about, and my hands would always get tired from writing with a pencil for too long. I also was a very 2D person, I was not interested in looking at things “outside the box”, I just took things as it is and didn’t have the urge to know more. I was basically the walking nightmare of any ELA teacher. This all changed when I met my freshmen english teacher, Mr. Strafach. As we were forced to do ice breakers and just basic introductions between teacher and student, he began to understand my dislike for english classes, which included any sort of writing or reading. Luckily, most of our beginning assignments were just personal narratives and short stories, so it only required a bit of writing and not much thinking, but this one winter break assignment would change my perspective on the subject completely. Previously, Mr. Strafach had told me I reminded him of a character in one of his favorite novels, and it wasn’t until we were assigned our own novels to read for our winter break assignment that I discovered which character that was. It was Holden Caulfield from “The Catcher in The Rye”.

The Catcher in The Rye is a novel that I could read and reread over and over again, yet still not understand at all. A kid gets kicked out of boarding school, goes through a bunch of crazy events in just the span of a few days, and somehow there’s still a bigger picture to it? The fact that I went straight into the mindset of trying to figure out how I was similar to the main character, Holden, didn’t make it any easier to understand. I began with trying to break down Holden and seeing who he was as a person, and he genuinely pissed me off. I did not see the appeal of his character and quite frankly he reminded me of all the negative parts of myself.  This made me feel even more stuck on figuring him out because I felt like my teacher used this as a way to get me self aware of the mistakes I was making as a student, since I definitely was not the best. This led to me to constantly rereading some parts in his perspective, and sometimes I’d just sit and daydream as Holden, as a form of trying to understanding what lead him to some of the decisions he made in the book and that’s when it fully hit me. It got to a point where I genuinely started to enjoy going into deep thought over this book, something I never imagined myself doing in the, what was, 14 years of my life. The same issues I had with reading previously, seeing between the small lines, getting the smaller picture, was all coming to me naturally only because I had semi interest in what I was reading. I just wasn’t putting enough effort previously into really understanding what I was reading because it just didn’t spark any interest in me. Being able to achieve this level of understanding in a novel really struck a cord with me, as I’ve never experienced anything like that before and it led to me getting the highest grade in my assignment in that class. I was able to describe Holden’s thoughts in certain situations during the novel, I was able to point out the the start and “end” of Holden’s manic episode, and just the ending of the book was something I could write an entire essay about. I’m very thankful to Mr. Strafach for assigning me that book, as it allowed for me to understand a world I never thought I’d be able to get into. I still have the school copy of the book today, including all my annotations and pages with folded corners in order to save all the pages and information I thought had more thought put into it than meets the eye. The method of trying to relate myself to the character, or simply put, “putting myself in their shoes”, truly made the test questions, short answers, and essays, a lot easier to write.

This also worked really well with information readings, and with more persuasive style essays. I basically put myself in the shoes of the author, or reporter, rather than a character. It really helped out, as It was much easier for me to tell what side the author is trying to support, especially if it seems like a more neutral approach. Once I got into that “author” mindset, I was also able to identity what the main points they were trying to convey are, as it’s something that they would mention once, but write paragraphs and paragraphs defending and trying to explain their thinking, or sometimes evidence, in the best way possible. With the constant annotation of The Catcher in The Rye, I definitely learned on how to highlight, or jot down, the things that were significant to the point I was trying to prove. Previously, I would claim that the entire piece of reading was important, as that’s the entire point of writing it, but with the infamous novel, I noticed that the literal most important parts are never just mentioned once, it’s constantly repeated over and over again, in hopes of the reader taking note and keeping that idea in mind. It may not be in the most obvious way, but it’s there, sometimes more blatantly than other examples.

I truly couldn’t thank Mr. Strafach and J.D Salinger enough for opening the doors and allowing me to understand and fully appreciate reading and writing. I always doubted my abilities due to my non existent interest for the topics, but all I needed was one really confusing novel to fully understand the beauty that is having skills in both reading and writing. It truly changes your perspectives on a lot of things and I felt like I became a much more open minding person, not only in what I read but in real life as well. Going from someone who saw everything in ‘2D’ to trying my best to see things in ‘4D’ greatly changed my opinion on the subject, and I hope it is a skill I can continue growing as I also grow.