If I Need a Flag, I'll Find One
Certain events in the last few months ((Last year)) have me considering long and hard who I am and what makes me me. There's certainly plenty of things I can point a finger too and go, hey, look! But, like everyone, there are very specific things that shape a person's mind set.
I grew up in a household with two teachers. My dad has alternately been a teacher, counselor and administrator for schools. My mom teaches elementary and that doesn't seem like it's really going to change. My dad also has a masters in psychology, so I always grew up with a better understanding on how the human brain worked from picking things up from him ((Not that he always applies what he knows to situations but growing up I had what basically amounted to informal therapy for years, especially in high school)). Also growing up, my family would have raging debates about the nature of humanity, warfare, religion, whether the world can be changed by individuals or not and other such deep topics of philosophy. Some of my friends who've seen my family together are nodding along to this I'm sure.
So I grew up in a house that debated and full of teachers. The other part to this, even more than just the fact that both my parents taught, is perhaps the fact that my dad loved the fictional tutors. One of my earliest memories is playing around with the Yoda collection my dad had. Action figures, different models and statues, and even a card board cut out that he grabbed from a movie theater. I think dad even had a Yoda with a santa hat... Point being, my dad loved Yoda.
I think this had a deep affect on my life. When I look at the two things I want to do most in the world, they both to some degree involve being and feeling like a tutor, and I say tutor rather than teacher because it really was just about gathering knowledge, and then passing the knowledge along in any way I can. I want to tell people things, I want to spread information. At heart, I almost want to be one of those crazy sages that live on a mountain top that people come to for advice, or even live in a swamp with droid-eating creatures. This is such a huge part of how I see myself, and apparently I'm pretty good at passing information on.
However, as usual there's a slight dark side to this too, in that I can get a lecturing tone, and sound like I'm just saying I'm more important or intelligent when really most of the time I really am just excited about having anything to say and passing it along.
So that lends itself very strongly to becoming a Professor someday. It's been my dream since I could pick up and absorb books.
The other thing I look at and would love doing is being an Editor. I love looking over stories and writings and poking and prodding it to make it better than it could have been otherwise. However, this lends itself to being somewhat harsh, and actually very critical. Between being an English Major and a Historian, which requires one to be very critical, the desire to be an editor just adds another layer to this. Usually though what I love is pushing a story or author to make it better, to think about what they're writing, and create an even better story/writing out of this. Except in my darkest moments, I don't like being critical to be critical, I do it to push things to be better. But this almost constant critic in the back of my head is very much part of who and what I am. I love shaping things and this is part of it, shaping words and papers.
I have always been pretty secure in my writing and knowing that I can write. Sometimes I'm not sure I can write history papers as well as English Crit or fiction, but I've always been pretty firm in my writing voice and knowing I can do it. This comes from a lot of places, including the all but amazing positive feedback I started getting when I posted my first fanfictions. I was really young to do so, though that's getting pretty common now. And I'm sure it was only other twelve and thirteen year olds reading and enjoying it, but that was just another buttress to knowing I could write.
Writing was my lifeline for years. Everyone seems to have some life line or another, and writing was mine since I started doing it in Fourth Grade. I would write stories in journals, and I have such a strong memory at the end of elementary/beginning of middle school of this particular journal I had that I was working on my favorite novel in ((I have never finished a draft of this blasted thing though god knows I must have started 30)). I found it at some cheap store. It was a medium sized brown leather journal, embossed with a gold tree and "Lord of the Rings." Each page was brownish tint with a map of middle earth on the pages, faded out. I would sit between periods and work in this journal.
Writing is my passion and my life line and I live and breathe it. Whether I'm actually ever published or not is not actually the point. It's part of who I am and it's one of the few places I am utterly secure in ((and then forget other writers don't feel as secure)). I have made so much of who I am and my identity around it. Writing is, after all, in many ways just another form of tutoring. It's always been one of those things I consider truly mine.
I grew up wanting to tutor others with role models like my parents and Yoda. I want to be a professor or editor, which are both about helping others learn, but also lends itself to critically looking at things and being downright critical in an attempt to make things better and have a nicer form and just work better. As long as I have hands to do it with, or a voice to dictate in, I will always write. And if I can't do that? I'll just do it in my head.
I grew up in a household with two teachers. My dad has alternately been a teacher, counselor and administrator for schools. My mom teaches elementary and that doesn't seem like it's really going to change. My dad also has a masters in psychology, so I always grew up with a better understanding on how the human brain worked from picking things up from him ((Not that he always applies what he knows to situations but growing up I had what basically amounted to informal therapy for years, especially in high school)). Also growing up, my family would have raging debates about the nature of humanity, warfare, religion, whether the world can be changed by individuals or not and other such deep topics of philosophy. Some of my friends who've seen my family together are nodding along to this I'm sure.
So I grew up in a house that debated and full of teachers. The other part to this, even more than just the fact that both my parents taught, is perhaps the fact that my dad loved the fictional tutors. One of my earliest memories is playing around with the Yoda collection my dad had. Action figures, different models and statues, and even a card board cut out that he grabbed from a movie theater. I think dad even had a Yoda with a santa hat... Point being, my dad loved Yoda.
I think this had a deep affect on my life. When I look at the two things I want to do most in the world, they both to some degree involve being and feeling like a tutor, and I say tutor rather than teacher because it really was just about gathering knowledge, and then passing the knowledge along in any way I can. I want to tell people things, I want to spread information. At heart, I almost want to be one of those crazy sages that live on a mountain top that people come to for advice, or even live in a swamp with droid-eating creatures. This is such a huge part of how I see myself, and apparently I'm pretty good at passing information on.
However, as usual there's a slight dark side to this too, in that I can get a lecturing tone, and sound like I'm just saying I'm more important or intelligent when really most of the time I really am just excited about having anything to say and passing it along.
So that lends itself very strongly to becoming a Professor someday. It's been my dream since I could pick up and absorb books.
The other thing I look at and would love doing is being an Editor. I love looking over stories and writings and poking and prodding it to make it better than it could have been otherwise. However, this lends itself to being somewhat harsh, and actually very critical. Between being an English Major and a Historian, which requires one to be very critical, the desire to be an editor just adds another layer to this. Usually though what I love is pushing a story or author to make it better, to think about what they're writing, and create an even better story/writing out of this. Except in my darkest moments, I don't like being critical to be critical, I do it to push things to be better. But this almost constant critic in the back of my head is very much part of who and what I am. I love shaping things and this is part of it, shaping words and papers.
I have always been pretty secure in my writing and knowing that I can write. Sometimes I'm not sure I can write history papers as well as English Crit or fiction, but I've always been pretty firm in my writing voice and knowing I can do it. This comes from a lot of places, including the all but amazing positive feedback I started getting when I posted my first fanfictions. I was really young to do so, though that's getting pretty common now. And I'm sure it was only other twelve and thirteen year olds reading and enjoying it, but that was just another buttress to knowing I could write.
Writing was my lifeline for years. Everyone seems to have some life line or another, and writing was mine since I started doing it in Fourth Grade. I would write stories in journals, and I have such a strong memory at the end of elementary/beginning of middle school of this particular journal I had that I was working on my favorite novel in ((I have never finished a draft of this blasted thing though god knows I must have started 30)). I found it at some cheap store. It was a medium sized brown leather journal, embossed with a gold tree and "Lord of the Rings." Each page was brownish tint with a map of middle earth on the pages, faded out. I would sit between periods and work in this journal.
Writing is my passion and my life line and I live and breathe it. Whether I'm actually ever published or not is not actually the point. It's part of who I am and it's one of the few places I am utterly secure in ((and then forget other writers don't feel as secure)). I have made so much of who I am and my identity around it. Writing is, after all, in many ways just another form of tutoring. It's always been one of those things I consider truly mine.
I grew up wanting to tutor others with role models like my parents and Yoda. I want to be a professor or editor, which are both about helping others learn, but also lends itself to critically looking at things and being downright critical in an attempt to make things better and have a nicer form and just work better. As long as I have hands to do it with, or a voice to dictate in, I will always write. And if I can't do that? I'll just do it in my head.