Opening Letter

I am and have long been an avid reader. I am sad to say that, like too many Americans, my reading time suffered a severe drop after I started middle school. In the last few years, however, I have been able to find more time to dedicate to my reading habit, especially during the summer. When I was younger, I liked fantasy books like the Redwall series and Star Wars spin off books. Other notable reads from my childhood include the Plant that Ate Dirty Socks and Three Investigators series. Within the last few years, I have been constantly occupied with fictions and novels My favorites in this category include Looking for Alibrandi, Brave New World, The Sun Also Rises, and Persuasion. I am also obsessed with the “classic” types of books that we read in school, particularly The Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby, and All Quiet on the Western Front. I am starting to break away from the fiction trend now, though, because I fell in love with Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild over the summer. Straying from this traditional type of literature, I also admit to being a fan of the Harry Potter and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants books.

Being a student at PCDS, much of my writing revolves around symbols in a book or why Samuel Adams is the coolest founding father. I wrote some poetry in middle school and won the school poetry contest in fifth grade. I’ve dabbled with writing poetry in high school but I haven’t ever been too serious about it since I started at PCDS. I started being interested in creative writing in Ms. Garagiola’s class last year and I have this closeted want to someday write a novel (what I call my “Great American Novel”). My favorite paper that I have written in high school is my psychoanalytic criticism paper on The Scarlet Letter in 11^th grade. As a writer, I think my biggest weakness is not being able to write well and quickly. I have become more organized and thoughtful in my writing as I’ve gotten older and I think that insight may be my biggest strength in writing. I like writing in different styles and reading different styles and am therefore rather uncontrollably excited for this class. (381)

P.S. WOW my formatting transfered itself with the copy and paste!