I want to be a writer. I've known about my love for English and the written word since the age of 13, when I wrote a piece of work for a beloved english teacher who gave me an A and told me he was moved by my piece. I revelled in the knowledge that I made someone else feel something using the power of my words. He didn't know me or the people I was writing about but he felt what I wanted to convey.
Aged 15 I decided rather rashly that I wanted to become a journalist to pursue my love for writing. I loved studying both poetry and literature and I genuinely adored writing english essays. My English exam is the only exam I've ever actually enjoyed.
In September I arrived at college expecting to find myself and study something I adored. Unfortunately I was truely let down. My poorly researched decision has forced me to be taught to stop using beautiful language. I've been told a sentence can contain no more than 23 words. "EVERY WORD MUST FIGHT FOR ITS LIFE" is a mantra that has been drilled into myself and my classmates minds.
The English language contains 1,025,109 words yet we are told the only words to be use in place of said is "stated" or "alleged." It pains me to say that what I am studying has both stunted my creativity and fuelled a hatered for reading.
Every week I have a class in which we learn about language and the use of grammar and words and I feel like the only one who enjoys those classes. That class is the only one I come out of with a smile on my face and a glimmer of hope in my heart. This hope is diminished days later as I'm told I write too creatively.
I want to write books. I want to take people to places more exotic and more interesting than where they are now. I want someone to be sat in an arm chair in Dublin to be taken to a tiny apartment in Paris with a frog and a lonely 20 something for company. I want to give people an escape. Writing is my escape. When life is tearing you down piece by piece it's a wonderful thought that you can create another world in which you can hide for a few hours.
I'm determined not to let my area of study completely deminish my love for literature and the written word. In ten years I'm going to come back to this, with an overflowing bookcase within eyeshot and notebooks upon notebooks filled my musings and written work and I will be making a living from writing creatively. I promise myself and those around me that I'm going to fall in love with writing again.
My life will be for nothing if I don't read, educate myself and write.
