Aren't I Poetic: Reflections on the Growth of a Writer

I wrote this little synopsis as the frosting for my zombie class cake two years ago; I just stumbled over it in my momentary struggle to locate those Hume essays from spring term. The professor had asked us to reflect on how our writing had grown since taking the class (and reading ever so many papers about poor Zombie Mary, my responses to which I would deign to include if I had had more experience with the topic and had been just that much nicer to their authors).

I am just. so. dramatic.

Reflections on the Growth of a Writer

We all grow in different ways, and I cannot claim to grow symmetrically or at the same rates at all times. Nevertheless, it is difficult at first to perceive how what appears to be stagnation, or even a period of moving backwards, can actually be a moment of profound growth not yet realized on the scape of the conscious.

It was during this class that I realized that I had failed myself as a writer; I had grown so comfortable in the little place that I occupied on the writing spectrum that I had refused to see how I could improve, evolve, or just be a little different. The infatigable attention-seeker that I am, I leaned too readily on the new teacher ready to praise my performances, and ignored the fact that I was a one-trick-pony, pulling out the same old routine for a new set of eyes.

So what inspired me to see myself in an honest new light? It’s hard to say. A part of it is that I grew tired of writing; grew weary of putting down the same words on the same page in the same order. I wasn’t proud of what I was writing anymore. I had lost my edge. In my melodramatic despair, my writing fulfilled its own prophecy in becoming worse, and I felt incapable of salvaging it. Even more painful, though, was watching my peers succeed me: what I had once done so easily and felt so proud of, my talent, was now being performed by others while I watched from the sidelines. Such humbling moments should never be ignored.

What have I learned from this experience? Only that transformation will come as surely as a butterfly emerges from a chrysalis. The samples that I have included in this portfolio are not the product of this transformation; they are not my best work. But these samples bear witness to a process that has only just begun, an awkward growth-spurt of creativity that expresses itself first timidly, tentatively, before it can remerge with confidence.

Such is what I have learned in these few short weeks. While I have not been able to completely shed my competitive edge, I have realized that it is no longer with the other members of the class that I am competing: I am competing against myself, a battle that will leave part of me vanquished, part of me the conqueror. Who I will emerge as, I have no idea.