Here at STEM we learn how to articulate our ideas and opinion so we can put them out into the community and make a difference. Right now in 7th grade we are just practicing our putting our ideas in to words. Over the course of my 7th grade year I’ve grown in making my writing original and less cliché.

 

At the beginning of the year my writing was very cliché and had lots of cheesy claims. In Language Arts Class we use journals to record our ideas. My very first journal entries are so unoriginal. My very first entry is a letter to Ms. Miller. I start it off with such an overused saying by writing “I’m excited to be in 7th grade. I think it’s a fresh start. New teachers, new friends, and a new attitude.” I think that is one of the most cliché things I’ve ever written or said. Know looking back at that I would tell the child writing that to use their creativity and open your letter with a different saying. It sounds like I took the sentence “New teachers, new friends, and a new attitude” from a mom who’s trying to get her kid to be excited for going back to school after summer break. Having over used sentences isn’t only bad because there over used, but because it can lead to plagiarism. Plagiarism is when you take some work without giving credit or asking permission. I realized I needed to be more original in my writing and to be myself at the beginning of 2nd quarter. I remembered that I had made this entry and wanted to look back to see if I had met the goals I had set. While reading this I cringed at my past self writing this because I was trying to be someone else. I would never say that sentence in real life so why would I write it? This is when I realized that I needed to start being myself when I wrote. I also wanted to go into different forms of writing like poetry and script form writing. Script form writing is when you take 2 or more characters who are having a conversation and put every time the go back in forth on a new line. This is called duologue. There are two reasons I wanted to write more poems and scripts. The first reason being I wanted to get better at writing these forms of poetry and wanted to work on my dialogue skills. The second reason being I think this a less used platform for expressing my ideas for kids my age.

 

One of my more recent entries is one titled “A Different View” We were assigned to write about an image of a drop on a blade of grass. In this blade of grass there was a little pond scene. Our teacher told us we could describe it, write a story, write about it reminded us of. I could see a lot of kids were writing a story or just describing the image. I wanted to write a poem about the image. I not only wanted to write a poem I wanted to write a rhyming poem that was silly and deep. Usually when kids think of poems they think of deep, meaningful, profound, and metaphorical poems that discuss life and death. Or some think of silly, fun, lighthearted poems like the ones Dr. Seuss wrote. I wanted to write one that was both deep and meaningful, while also being fun and lighthearted. I also wanted a rhyming poem. So I had to figure out a rhyme scheme. A rhyme scheme is that order or pattern of the rhyming words at the end of each line. The way rhyme schemes are shown is using letters representing rhymes. So the first line on a stanza the word at the end is always labeled “a”. (A stanza is like a poem paragraph) Then the next line if rhymes “with line a” then this line is also labeled “a”, if the second line does not rhyme with “line a” then this second line is labeled “b”. Then on the 3rd line if this line rhymes with “a” or “b” it is labeled the same label as whichever line it rhymes with. If it does not rhyme with “a” or “b” it is labeled line “c”. This goes on until the end of the stanza. Each stanza must follow this scheme. My rhyme scheme was “a, a, b, b, a”. At one part of my poem, I talk about how the people in this world see a bee passing by. Some people might see this as just a funny part of my poem, but others may see it as a metaphor for the unknown. A metaphor is when you compare two objects or ideas without using the words like or as. I found this to be original because most kids can only write very deep poems or very silly poems. I had found a way to write both at once. This, compared to my first entry, is so much more original because this poem is something that I might say or read aloud in real life and be sincere about it. I wouldn’t be comfortable reading aloud my first entry because it’s nothing like who I am.

 

I need to be original in not cliché when writing essays when trying to get into college. This is because when trying to enter college, I need to show them that I have a personality and have my own opinions. This is important because when colleges are looking for new students, the colleges look for originality, independent thinking, and professionalism. This is why my growth in originality is so important.