Shakari Paige 

AP English Literature 
May 21, 2019 
 
As I started my middle school career I always had this vision of myself that I aspired 
to be playing in my head, in part generated from countless stories written in the 
fashion that I admired most. It was like a movie playing in my head, that was being 
fueled constantly by a written script of the life that I had in this ‘movie’. As I neared 
the end of my middle school career, the words that fueled the movie of my life became 
something I was use to. Once I began my high school career and completed my 
sophomore year I knew the words that encourage the movie had changed in ways of, 
describing my ideas completely, as well as how to take on various writing styles while 
also staying true to my voice as a writer. 
 
As I started my freshman year I knew there were still some remnants of middle school 
writing that painted the picture of my aspirations. They were words that barely 
described efficiently and when they did, they were descriptive in the wrong places. 
“Without my knowledge or without thinking I blurted “I just didn’t want to do it.” 
They surprised me by laughing I didn’t know why and they never explained why, I 
started smiling but out of habit of course I didn’t think that was funny. “So you know 
what that means? You don’t need to be on the computer or on the phone.” I stared at 
the table. I had to wait 5 weeks until report card pick up so I could get on the computer 
again and get my phone back.” While reading back on this writing piece that I did in 
November of my freshman year I noticed there were many spaces where there could 
have been more details, why mention smiling out of habit? As well as places where 
organization was unclear. Such as a comma when starting dialog, and demonstrating 
the impact not being able to use the computer or my phone had on me. When I was 
coming up on the second semester of freshman year I noticed that my teachers were 
pushing me to develop and explain my ideas. Writing notes such as, ‘Tell me more!, 
Develop your ideas.’ Propelling me to answer, with my ideas clear and descriptive. “In 
this story Mrs. Briggs is pointing out a flaw in the criminal justice system with Miss 
Petrocelli saying a negative thing to prove her case but using that so called negative 
thing alongside her case to make her case look better against the other to make them 
look bad.” Looking at a argumentative paper that I wrote April of my freshman, I 
notice that while I may have still lacked the control of knowing the right time to 
include detail I did progress in at least including more detail. As seen in the 
demonstration of my first semester of writing freshman year, the shift of including 
detail and knowing the right timing of detail as well as organization is evident. 
 
Junior year, I found myself describing my ideas in an efficient way, the words of my 
story were organized and descriptive in the right places. My writing in terms of detail 
had flourished and became something that fit my voice as a writer and writing style at 
the particular time, “Ethics is the study of human behaviors and how we interpret our 
actions on whether or not they are right or wrong. Justice is when the right thing is 
done and those right actions lead to a positive outcome for those involved in the 
situation or impacted in some sort of way. Ethics and justice are related because in 
order to gain justice in a situation, it is believed that one would have to follow the right 
ethics to achieve the most positive outcome.” Writing about the ethics, which 
framework shapes my life, as well as justice and then using an efficient description to 
describe my thinking in explaining how they are related, demonstrates the expansion of 
knowledge on how to effectively incorporate detail in a piece of writing throughout my 
years of high school. Going back to work completed in February the same development 
can be noticed when taking descriptive language into account. “I chose lost love in the 
Great Gatsby because there is a lot of love being forgotten or being departed with 
throughout the book, taking place with many of the characters and sometimes taking 
place in the past and attempted to be brought to the present,”while reading this I came 
to the thought that if this were me from freshman year writing I would have just ended 
the sentence at ‘or being departed with throughout the book.’ During Junior year I 
developed into learning how to orderly include detail that will make the point that I am 
saying pop out at the reader. Using details that accurately supports what I am writing 
as well as my style of writing. 
 
Going into my sophomore year of high school the words powering my aspirations were 
reading, that I would be happy doing something but not something that said me, I had 
my own space but not where I dreamed it would, and that I was loved but not so much 
how I really wanted to be. “What would you do if someone tried to take away your 
right of freedom to make themselves feel more superior? To make you feel like you 
were nothing and they were only doing it for your own good? Doing it to create a 
‘more organized and just nation.’Martin Luther King Jr. was faced with that question 
and he fought for what he believed in.” Taking this piece of evidence from a literary 
analysis essay that I worked on regarding Martin Luther King Jr.’s L ​ etter from 
Birmingham Jail​ exhibits how there was a struggle in asking a question to the reader 
and connecting it back to the topic. As a beginning writer I found it difficult to 
complete a writing piece that encompassed my full efforts because I was struggling 
with learning how to weave in my voice while also staying at an appropriate 
standpoint, “While there are all legitimate reasons, depending on your beliefs, to 
oppose same-sax marriage but to deny two people the right to officialize their love, to 
say to two people that ‘your love is not real love, your relationship is not a real 
relationship; is like saying ‘you do not deserve this because there are certain qualities 
that are different about you from majority of the people that reside in the U.S.” 
Towards the end of sophomore while the flow of detail may have still been a bit shaky 
the development of showcasing my voice in my writing and learning to incorporate that 
in a professional manner was beneficial to producing the writer that I am today. 
 
When I started my senior year the movie played out in my mind said I had a nice house 
and the inside was how I wanted it to look it was my safe haven but again not where, 
I was happy coming home from work but never could picture what it is that I do. The 
writing at the beginning of my senior year was descriptive in the right places and 
captured the words and how I wanted them to sound but my writing still lacked my full 
efforts. “Though this chapter talks about the weather having a more significant 
meaning than it just being the eather, “Here’s what I think: weather is never just 
weather. IT’s never just rain. And that goes for snow, sun warmth, cold, and probably 
seet, although the incidence of sleet in my reading is too rare to generalize,” this 
chapter shows that things that may normally get overlooked actually have a great 
significance to the story.” This excerpt was written with the attitude of thinking that I 
was mixing up my style while also productively including my voice as a writer. “Every 
February my mother makes three out of four of her children send her a black history 
fact every day. This all stemmed from one day when she asked us how Malcolm X died, 
and my brother went ahead and said, “He got hit by a trolley.” Now my mother has 
put together that two of her children started out in the same school, and the third 
went to a different school but eventually came to the one her other two went to, so if 
two don’t know majority of their black history and one does, it must be either 
inadequate teaching or non teaching of black history going on at the school the two 
started out at.” To finish off my developmental writing, and my growth as a writer in 
high school is chose to end with my perspective on B ​ eloved e​ ssay to demonstrate 
growth in not only finding my voice and how to incorporate it into my writing but also 
my progress in mastering detail when writing. 
 
Throughout my four years of high school my writing style has changed, gone through 
some experimental waves in finding my voice, and what and who I want to be and 
represent myself as when writing. I have learned many techniques that continue to 
push me forward as a writer to keep learning and to keep learning and changing for the 
better. Not only has this lead me to finding a way to express my voice this has also 
impacted the books that I find myself looking for. When I first started high school I 
sought out books that only had the basic idea of what I wanted to read about, romance. 
As I progressed into high school I noticed myself paying more attention to the 
description of books and the details that were including in the beginning pages of 
books. Now as a senior I can say that It’s not as easy to find a book to enjoy as it was 
freshman year. I have developed my writing style and have modified my criteria of 
what I take in, knowing it will directly influence the words in my literary career.