When I was in High School I wrote an essay on The Great Gatsby which received a C-. It was in my opinion a bias and unfair grade. In fact, it was and still is to this day, the lowest grade I’ve ever received on an essay. The English teacher had reason enough, as she was the mentor for the student council, with which I had been in a quarrel with one of the student body officers over a love interest. This teacher was notorious for grudges against students(!) and this same student body officer began spreading false rumors about me, which caused a great deal of trouble and grief (in fact, after all was said and done this teacher - believing the other - dropped my respectable A to a B+ for the previous quarter without warning and on the last moment the grades could be submitted). Which, frankly, was poppycock.

Besides the point, the teacher on this Great Gatsby essay penned at the top of the paper next to her arguable grade the words: “I can’t understand any of this. Writing isn’t one of your strong suits, I recommend looking into college programs that require very little of it.” My essay was a bit obscure and largely metaphorical as it compared and contrasted that the rich and poor of the book largely had the same problems, but was it unreadable? Certainly not.

A similar event occurred in college as an atheistic teacher (and proud of it!) docked me points for choosing a religious topic concerning first-hand accounts of modern day miracles and their efficacy. She gave me a C+, but per her usual classroom policy, allowed for a single rewritten submission to improve the grade. When I went in to discuss with her what sections to rewrite she reasonably said she didn’t want to read it again and asked if she just changed the grade to an A- if we could drop it altogether. It was a good bargain all around.

Writing has always been a personal passion and something I’ve enjoyed. In elementary school I did in fact win the D.A.R.E. essay contest and to this day still have those same negative views towards heavy drug use. Through middle school and high school I entered State Reflections Contests and my Senior year I entered a poem which won second in the state (oddly written at the same time as my Great Gatsby essay).

Ms. McCandless was my high school Creative Writing teacher who was the first adult to tell me that my writing was worth pursuing for the sole reason that I liked what I wrote. I was and will always be my first audience. Her and Niki H., my classroom buddy, gave me encouragement for the silliness or deepness I always pursued in the creative process (I find my writings tend exist on either end of this spectrum, middle of the roads I’ve found are better for chickens to cross, not words to be written).

I’ve pocketed a good chunk of side money from writing essays for others beginning in 7th grade and pushing through to college. An idea that originally came from a boy named Clint who offered me $5 to write a five paragraph essay. At the time I didn’t consider “dumbing” down my words so I had to write every essay for him that year so as not to create suspicion (it was a couple years later I learned that all the money he had paid me was taken methodically by alternating back-and-forth from his dad’s wallet to his mother’s purse). My prices increased. My customers grew. And I lived large every Friday at the Dollar Tree.

Above all, Imaginish is my gift to my family. I hope these writings can serve some usefulness in your journey of life. To pen is to heal, to create is to start anew. Even the sun is turned away each night, but words that ring true cannot be silenced.