Class Journal 2

I know, I know! I haven't been publishing my journal entries. I really deserve a slap on the hand for that. But I have been thinking about them!..and I have like four of them actually written out by hand. I've just never been really...technological. Which is pretty ironic since I actually have a job right now that is online, giving tutoring to kids. I never even learned how to type correctly. I pretty much use like 4 fingers to do all my typing. Pathetic, I know. I'm something of an anachronism I guess.

Anyway, I should really get to the actual writing part of this blog. Not the babbling I've been doing up to this point. Since we are working with memoirs, I wanted to write about an experience that I once had with writing when I was in high school. It was one of the ideas that I had but discarded, but I figured I could use it for a journal, so here we are!

Well, it all started in my junior year of high school. Since they had no teacher for the accelerated 11th grade English course that year, they had put me in the 12th grade "Advanced Placement" class. It was AP English Language, and on the first day my new teacher told us we would each be expected to write a book during the last quarter of the school year. It made me nervous to hear that - this teacher was known for her very high expectations. Finally, the last quarter of the school year came around and she gave us our schedule for how we should be working on our book. We were to think of her as our editor and hand in divisions of our book for her to edit throughout the few months we had. Everything was coming along really nicely for me, I was on schedule and my teacher seemed to like my ideas. Remember how I said I've never been technological? Well, I had been saving my book on my little USB that I carried around with me everywhere...just on my USB. Like a fool, I had not saved any backups anywhere else. One day my USB went missing. I freaked out and asked everyone I knew if they had seen it anywhere. For about two or three days I was in a constant state of either despair or extreme stress, and my throat always had that funny tight feeling like I was about to cry. Then one of my friends told me that they had seen some guy with it. I was elated, amazed that I was actually able to find it. Of course, I was a bit nervous about talking to this guy, but I really didn't care about that. I just had four days or so left until my project - the book that I had strained and sweat over for months - was due. I found him and asked if he had my USB. He looked at me, a bit embarrassed, and told me he did. I was so happy I almost kissed him. If he would just let me have my project, he could even keep the damn contraption I said. The book was all that mattered. He stood there silently for a few seconds, looking at me with shame and...was that pity? My hopes began to fall even before he said anything.

"I deleted everything on it," he said.

Ugh. It was like a glacier had run me over and flattened me out. It became a bit hard to breathe. My brain went into a shut-down, as if I was panicking. I just stared at him and tried to get some part of my body working again. Finally I just looked at him and told him, "Oh. Well. I guess this is my fault."

I told the story to my friends in my English class and they all sat back and looked at me in shock. They, better than even my best friends could, understood the kind of stress and pain I felt over losing my book. "That's it?!" they asked. "You just let him off the hook?!" I explained that yes, I was mad at him - he had done a mean and extremely inconsiderate thing by deleting someone else's hard work without a second thought. But, I sighed, in the end I had nobody else that I could blame except for myself. It was my responsibility to make sure I had my work, no one else's. I still had the hard copies of some of my work, after all.

One of my friends (I remember exactly who it was too. I had a crush on him.) looked at me really solemnly and said, "Do you want me to beat him up for you? I will."

That night I went home and dug out all the hard copies of my work that I had. Most of them were written all over with tiny little editing notes. There were a few chapters that were missing; those I would have to write all over again from scratch. I sat down and began typing. For three days, I was immersed in a world of words words words and the little tcktcktcktck-tcktck-tcktcktck of the keyboard. I went to classes, came home and sat down to type. For three days I lived on coffee and went with no sleep at all. My brain was exhausted and overrun beyond reason, but by the end of the third day I had my book, and even though I was practically dead, I was pretty impressed by myself. I was determined to have my book in on it's due date, no excuses. I had not been sure if I could do in three days what it had taken me a whole quarter to do, but I had managed somehow to pull it off, and was really proud of that.