“The Imagination I Never Used”

When you think of high school English you probably think of trauma, a torture device if you will. You remember the endless random sheets of looseleaf piled in our folders or even the old books that never left the library before and the teacher decided today would be the day they do something new. We may be dramatic but English in high school always followed a strict and demanding curriculum with books that no one liked. It also was just endless essays that no one ever got a perfect score on. You always had that one teacher that said, “No one ever gets a perfect score in my class”, you’d then realize your whole semester was going to be terrible. English in high school just forces you to remove all creativity from your mind, forced into a four-point rubric that always stresses you out after you read it for the sixth time trying to see if you got all the points, realizing it doesn’t matter because the teacher sees differently. Well in junior year, it was different, in fact, the first essay I ever got to write without unjustified criticism. 

Junior year, the most important year of high school where you have to submit your college application and write the hardest part of your application, the essay. I walked into class on the second week of school where I knew the real work would begin. Knowing that it’s our junior year I knew the dread that we were going to have our college essay be the first thing he grades. To no surprise on that Monday morning, he assigned the essay and all I could hear were my peers muttering under their breaths. Mr Rubenstein then said “This essay will have no rubric. That’s when the infamous question arose, “But Mr Rubenstein, how will I know if my essay is good or not?” This question circled around my head until he answered, “Just answer the topic”, and the bell rang. I hated that answer because every single teacher says that and I always didn’t do well on my essays. In elementary school I didn’t use enough vocabulary to my teachers’ likings, in middle school I used too much evidence to support my reasoning, and in high school I was not close enough to the answer my English teacher wanted. I didn’t believe Mr Rubenstein. I always thought that there was always a trick that every English teacher wanted but didn’t say and it made me frustrated, at least with the rubric I can get close to what they want, now I have nothing.

I get home from school ready to write this essay, with my lonely piece of looseleaf and fresh lead pencil I get to work. I always had self doubt when it came to my writing but regardless I wanted the assignment done and finished. I was going to write about what hobby led me to my career that I was interested in. Should I write about videogames? No, that’s too violent. Listening to music? No, that doesn’t even match my career. I just started writing till I ran out of ideas that night. What I didn’t realize was that I would take all week, right up to Thursday night to finish this essay but regardless I had six hundred words on my paper. I go in on Friday and submit my work, sitting back down anxiously in my chair. Will he like it? Will he tell me there’s no way I’m going to college? I left that room anxious and felt my stomach twirl. I didn’t feel great about that essay, mostly because I had no guidelines to work off of. Regardless I go home and wait for hours for an email from my teacher about my grade, this would determine how the rest of the semester would go. Just then I see the notification and swiftly open my email, my eyes darting and I see the grade, a hundred. “An amazing essay, very original, you should write more personal essays.” This email was short but impacted me greatly, a good score on an essay and praise rather than unexplainable criticism. This is the only English class where I got this opportunity to write creatively, an essay where I wrote with my voice rather than just writing with no care to complete an assignment. Education shouldn’t push you away towards another subject like math or science just because of personal opinions of your work, which happened to me.ent. Have fun!