Red Ink and Me

Growing up I always thought of myself as a good writer, I read A LOT of books and tried to do my best to imitate Roald Dahl and company as best as I could. When we wrote our first essay in third grade and the teacher said "Now I'll read a few good examples from the class" I leaned back with a smug grin on my face and prepared to hear my own massive one paragraph essay read aloud and bask in academic glory. It came as a shock when the teacher did not start reading my essay first...or second...or third...or ever. With my bottom jaw almost on the floor the teacher began to hand back our small pieces of literary defeat. When she finally placed mine on my desk I almosy immediately declared that she had given me the wrong essay, I had written mine with pencil not red ink. A horrified feeling ensued as I realized what the red ink was...corrections. I seemed to me as though my words, sentences, and overall ideas were entirely incorrect. It was, in fact, this very moment that my long standing hatred of thick red ink was birthed.

Obviously I have never been a fan of having a paper thrust back at you with various lines, circles, and puncuation written all over it. Red ink does not seem to do any justice to the fact that what you are holding in your hand is somebody's ideas (or at least an attempt to mold ideas). It always seemed like kind of a vain attempt at improving students writing on the teachers part. I do find it understandable since most teachers have way too many students to ever throughly review and revise every piece of writing produced by their students. For me it always seemed like a few minor puncuation and spelling corrections were never enough, I wanted actual feedback. My wish was finally fulfilled (only about eight years later) when I arrived in college. In classes comsisting of only 10-12 people it was possible for the instructor to read and response to students writing in both a positive and critical way. I really prefer some kind of writing workshop, one that lets both the teachers and students work together as a microscopic writing community in order to advance the writing skills of everyone involved (and maybe save some of that precious red ink for the math teachers).