Like most writers, I began crafting stories as a child. I wrote autobiographical short stories, scribbling scenes and chapters into various notebooks that I left unfinished.
In elementary school I wanted to be an author. I talked about one day majoring in English at college and writing "realistic fiction books." By the time I was a teenager, I was embarrassed of my goal and decided to pursue a different career. I knew I wanted to write, but it seemed narcissistic and unrealistic to admit wanting to be a writer. I continued to write a lot, but I kept the stories to myself while I tried to figure out who I wanted to be.
In college, my journals began to unknowingly take the form of creative nonfiction essays. During my first semester at Utah State, I took a required English class centered on research essays. In my writing, I wove in my own story, convinced that personal experience was a form of research. My professor recommended me to become a writing tutor for the university's Writing Center. I was shocked. I felt so inadequate giving other students writing advice. My hands shook while I tutored, and I worried that everyone could tell I was a fraud. Still, it thrilled me to talk about writing. I loved reading student essays and thinking about craft. Their writing stuck with me. While I walked to campus I thought about their essays and the power of using language to learn and share ideas.
I switched my major to creative writing and dove in.
I loved all the genres, but I especially loved creative nonfiction. Reading nonfiction moved me and caused me to think more than any other writing had before. I wanted to surround myself with works of nonfiction and drink it in. I wanted to read it, and I wanted to write it. I found like-minded friends and faculty who helped me develop the craft--who pushed me to write the hard stuff, the real stuff.
A few months before graduation, my professor asked if I'd considered graduate school. I hadn't. USU offers a creative writing master's program, and I liked the idea of getting two more years to work with the faculty I'd just started to connect with. The application deadline was only a couple days away, but I applied.
My two years at graduate school were some of the best of my life. I wrote a thesis, the beginning of what I envision to be a full-length memoir. I made close friends, friends who I will write with for the rest of my life. Along with my own creative and critical work, I taught introductory and intermediate English at USU. Teaching filled me.
I currently teach intermediate English at Utah State. I want to spend my life writing and teaching in whatever capacity possible. Writing harnesses the universal truth of the human experience. Through story and metaphor, writing is an assembly that helps me become fully human.
I am so glad that you had an instructor who guided you toward the Writing Center and toward majoring in English. I have learned so much from your writing and from knowing you.