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At the same time that I was getting prepared to go to UT Austin, my mom and step-dad were moving to another town. I wasn't simply packing up some articles of clothing and my computer, I was packing up my whole room, and the contents were being split between Austin and Longview Texas. As with any grueling task, I did my fair share of dilly-dallying, and whenever I'd happen upon an old school assignment or poem, I'd read it with fascination. As crude as my handwriting and my writing style were at 8 years old, I would get a sense of pride from what I had written. As a "grown-up" my writing has become lengthy and rambling in attempts to fulfill the quest for the perfect word or thoughts. I'm bent on being GOOD, and with that comes censorship and superfluous content. As a child, there was no such pressure. The teacher would request that you'd write about the moon, and so I did. My astronomical dissertation titled "My Trip to the Moon" spanning three pages went something like this:

"The moon is far away and it is not made of green cheese. I would love to go to the moon. It would be fun. If I were on the moon, I would float around for hours. I would jump up and down and do flips. I would jump and fly for a little bit. If I were on the moon, there wouldn't be enough oxygen. I might fall in the Sea of Tranquility. I wouldn't have my family or friends. The moon wouldn't be a ball at all."

So painful in its simplicity, and yet so much of an accurate reflection of what I was probably thinking. You can see how my mind was exhilarated with the thought of going to the moon and all the possibilities of fun. However, the mood changed as my little head began to realize the impracticality of it, and I ultimately came up with the conclusion that the moon "wouldn't be a ball at all."

After reading this, and other stories like "Florence and Marco" about a Chinese woman and a Mexican man who fell in love and wanted to get married but were conflicted about where to have the wedding because of the locations of their families, I couldn't help but swell with pride at my ingenuity. Second grade writings on, however, I started to see more and more deliberate, formulaic writing styles. I never actually remember following what the teacher expected exactly, but my education was showing through in my works. And yes, my writings got inherently better, but they started losing this magical simplicity that I only managed to have when I was a child. Now I long for that simplicity in my writing. I am very daunted with the task of "hammering my thoughts into unity" and more so with making EVERY word count. That's what I'm awful at. I am not as articulate as I wish I could be. I envy those who can simply state a profound idea in mere words while I stumble clumsily through explanations. This is something that has grown with my age. I feel in some way it's not being able to be honest enough. I should be more frank in my writing, less ornate. The dressing of words is just a scam– it covers up the fact that I don't know what I'm really doing and I'm reaching blindly for an ending or the necessary word count. I have so many ideas, so many beliefs, and I ache to let people know. Honestly though, nobody cares about your ideas when they've explained them in four pages. Others appreciate simplicity in your work as well. I go into this course, waiting for my work to be bludgeoned into tight compact works of genius—and if not that, at least bludgeoned.