The story if my life

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The story if my life
It‘s funny that my story as a writer does not start with me; it begins with my mother. My mother is a writer. Well in fact, she is an editor. Yes, you heard it, and believe me, there is a huge difference. I suppose it is the contrast between the two of us. Growing up in a family that adored language, I developed the sense of writing back in third grade. My mother reminds me today that I begged and cried on her lap to read the last sentence of every children’s books she bought for me. She knew that reading was my passion and that someday I would become a great writer. At the age of eight, she decided that it was time to reach for my dreams. She went ahead to buy me a toy typewriter so that I could practice my writing skills. While she sat on her computer typing breaking news, I played with my toy typing whatever I could remember from the stories I read. “I wish I could read you weekly newspaper like in the good old days”. I wish our neighbors could forget it, but one of them kept reminding me of how I used to writer my own weekly newspaper and deliver to their houses. Guess what the headlines read; “my little brother is annoying”. This was my family choice, not forgetting “News Just In: Eat More Candy: Broccoli is bad for Your Health!”
Nothing impressed me more than expressing my thoughts in writing. I was not a good imaginative or creative writer, but very good at freehand writing where I felt comfortable expressing my thoughts. As I got into high school, I got my hands on one of my mother’s favorite books. The title read “Nasiib Buundo” written by one of the greatest Arab writers, Abdi-Noor Haji Mohamed. Of course, I wanted people to appreciate my writing too, so it captured my attention and I went ahead to read it page by page. Apparently, I did not love his poetry, but I loved the way he spoke out his mind in his writings. At one point, I told myself, “Why can’t I write like Mohamed”. One of my teachers in high school encouraged me to do a lot of reading; little did he know that my ‘profession’ was actually writing. It‘s a little shocking that I had developed a profession in high school right? I went to college and met a teacher who would later become my mentor. I participated in English essay writing and received the award of the best writer after a panel of professors voted my essay as the best. I acknowledged Mohamed as my inspiration and to my surprise, one of the professors commented that Mohamed had someone to propagate his writings. Was I astounded? You guess!
However, it did not come as a surprise to me, but rather as an encouragement. Writing officially became my profession after an endorsement from my teacher in college and I made it my mission to become the best in my class. I emulated certain aspects of my mother’s writings, but I loved writing shorter and informal essays. Honestly, I do not have the patience to develop formal essays because I like to be casual and a little colloquial, though I still want my essays to flow cleverly and effortlessly. I like reading things that speak to me, and I want to talk about them and apply those ideas to paper. In my writing, there is nothing as fulfilling as finding the right phrase or word, especially after being stuck for hours trying to think. I am even more proud when I finish my writing and realize that I have something to display. Today, I do not just write because my mother used to or somewhere along the way, someone proclaimed me as the next Abdi-Noor Haji Mohamed. I write because I developed a profound and lasting obsession for reading and writing that is exclusively my own.

Assignment 2: summary and critique
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The Seven Lesson School Teacher
Summary
This summary will focus on an article titled “The seven lesson schoolteacher” by John Taylor Gatto, a 1991 New York State Teacher of the Year. This article is an online commentary from the Information Liberation website posted on May 24 2006. In the article, Gatto lists seven lessons that include “Confusion, Class position, Indifference, Emotional dependency, Intellectual dependency, Provisional self-esteem and one can’t hide”. Gatto discusses these...