My less-than-steller debut in AP English IV

Mr. Coon,

I'll get to the bottom line first: I'm not an English person. Okay, that came out wrong. My academic strengths do not lie in the English department. I much prefer to watch a History Channel documentary about the Cold War than to read a Jane Austen novel about love. That being said, I do not mind reading literature, both fiction and nonfiction. I'm just really picky. Books with simple language, an engaging plotline, and excellent characters draw my attention. Let's put an extra emphasis on simple language—I cannot stand novels with super ornate sentences and ten-page long descriptions of a tree. I want to read escape, not to admire. I love that when I find a good book, and if I have a lot of time, I can sit down and read like a speed demon. When this goes awry, when I'm reading a book I do not particularly enjoy, I take a very long time to finish it. My favorite book is definitely The Catcher in the Rye. Once we were assigned to read it in English III, I finished it in about two nights. Other favorites include Ragtime, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and The Lovely Bones. And I can gobble up a Harry Potter book of 800 pages in about 10 hours. As silly as that sounds, I think J.K. Rowling employs all the characteristics in literature I'm looking for when I read. Also, I'm a closet Harry Potter geek.

I've always been a "reluctant reader". My older sister, Faith, loves to read. I grew up with Faith reading every Great Illustrated Classics she could get her hands on. I was content with comic books and atlases. This perturbed my parents; they thought it was some parenting failure. And I don't think it was until Grade 5 that they figured out that I could read a lot, I just had not been reading things to my liking. In grade 5, social studies was American History. We had a small, easy textbook. It was the first in the series of nine. They were only about 300 pages each. As soon as I was assigned my first reading, I was hooked. I finished the first book in about a week, and I begged my parents to buy me the rest of the set. Over the course of grade 5, I read the entire set of A History of US by Joy Hakim. The history textbook reading tradition continued when I was in grade 8. I read the entire US History textbook I purchased for the class the summer before school started. This tradition did not continue in my Junior year, but I still looked forward to AP US History reading assignments. As my love for American history grew, my time spent reading pleasure books diminished. As Kurt Vonnegut says, "So it goes."

As a writer, by now you can tell that I write a lot like I speak. This makes creative writing really fun for me, and research papers not so much. However, when I really work hard, when I really stay on task, when my short attention span does not get the better of me, I can produce really great writing. My proudest writing moment of my high school career is definitely my I.D. paper. It helped that my assigned novel, Ragtime, is an amazing book. I worked impossibly hard on that paper, but for more than a good grade. I wanted to prove to Mr. Martin that despite my poor English grades of the past, I was a good writer. It worked. I received a 94 on the paper (it would have been a 98 had I not been a bit lazy with citations). A 94 on one of the milestones of the PCDS curriculum is not bad for a kid who generally dislikes writing academic papers.

I am not sure if this is an incredible insight into my psyche as an English student, but I hope you now possess a clearer picture of me as a reader, a writer, and a person in your mind.

Peace, love, and lobster,
Lizzy Burton