My whole life has been spent focusing on literature and word structure. What words string together beautifully, how phrases can be clipped and rearranged to make art.

Needless to say, I’ve got the language arts and grammar subjects basically bagged.

However, that doesn’t mean I like my English classes, especially not at the K-12 level.

Everything feels so tedious, and the curriculum is so rigidly structured that as a freshman and sophomore, I would dread showing up to class. 

Reading and writing are two of my favorite things in the world, but analyzing overdone and uninteresting texts and passages sucks the joy out of those activities for me.

Middle and high school ELA/ILA courses bore me to death, and I always feel creatively restricted.

Dual credit was a game changer for me, though.

The essays are more unique. Of course there are assignment requirements to adhere to, but this is the first year I’ve been able to incorporate my own interests that heavily into an assignment.

If I wanna talk about Rise of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for five hundred words, I probably can!

There is a lot of media analysis that doesn’t feel stiff or ancient. I can form arguments from different angles and I feel like I’m growing as a writer and author even if it’s an entry-level college English class.

By giving us more free reign as well as modern media to study and pull rhetoric from, I’m able to clearly incorporate what an audience should take away from my own work if they were to analyze it.

Not to sound dramatic, but homework doesn’t feel quite as taxing (a little stressful because I procrastinate) as it did before, and I feel as though I’m actually retaining information and technical practice for professional writing.

High school English didn’t fuel me with that sense of accomplishment or happiness; though having a fourth period class sucks, being a part of a more diverse curriculum and variety of assignments makes it suck a little less.