Dear Biographer, I'm sorry I'm not more organized.
Today I tackled my bedroom closet, which is full of journals, assignments books, and class binders. For the last 6 years, this closet has been getting progressively more disorderly and it was finally time to take the plunge...
and throw some things out.
Ok, so it wasn't that much, but it felt really good to finally go through everything and objectively put things into the bin. Every other year I've attempted to clean, I've gotten stuck reading old journals and never finish.
Now, I'm talking notebooks and notebooks of class notes, journaling, notes from Bible studies and youth camp, and most embarrassingly, teenage poetry. It was scattered everywhere. I might be coerced into publishing some of it someday, if you haven't already found me on poetry.com (who remembers this? All my friends and I wanted to get the coffee table book with our poetry published in size 8 font).
I couldn't believe how much I wrote throughout my teenage years! The hardest part of sifting through everything was that I would write 5 pages in one journal and leave the rest blank, or 85% would be class notes, but interspersed would be scribbles about how I was feeling that day.
I spent the afternoon listening to Switchfoot and Jennifer Knapp and remembering what it was like to be 15. I really only cared about God, friends, getting into the school play, and boys. I did silly things like take notes with my left hand, or completely in highlighter, and drew lots and lots of doodles. I feel like periodically reading this stuff will make me a better teacher.
I found the first research paper I ever wrote. It was from 7th grade and it was on Elian Gonzalez. I also have a bunch of IB English HL essays, I'd be willing to sell.
Just Kidding. But really.
2 comments:
I'd offer to buy the essays, but I don't see school in my future for a long, long time. Grin.
Ha ha ha! I feel like we are living parallel lives. I'm in the States for just a short stint this summer, but also decided (or was asked) to tackle the old journals, binders, and assignment books!
In my case this also includes a lot of doodles and artwork. Not to brag, but I am actually quite impressed by some of the writing of my youth! I actually knew something back then! Definitely not going to throw it out yet.
And yes, I have the teenage poetry as well. I'm getting rid of some of those notes about first crushes.
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