iReflect: A Look in the Mirror (And Over the Last Seven Months)

My mom's motivation for me joining iQuest was for me to get a job. My motivation for joining iQuest was to get out of fifth period.

Honestly, and rather naively, I said this on my application for iQuest. What can I say? It was the middle of summer when I decided to apply and the lack of a face-to-face interview made me brave. Still, I was able to get into the class and indulge myself in writing and fifth period free once/twice a week.

The class was a lot more work than I thought it'd be, to be honest. Like, we actually did stuff. We got assignments and had to think about things and everything. Not that it was particularly hard or anything, but still, it wasn't what I was expecting. I'm not complaining (really . . . okay maybe sorta kinda) because in the end it ended being a lot of stuff I really needed to know. Like how to work a spreadsheet. I ended up needing to know that for an Econ project I did recently and it's probably something I'll need to know later on too.

But while I appreciate all the important life skills I learned in this class this year (that I wouldn't have learned in any other class, thank you very much, my college-but-not-real-world prep school), that wasn't what this year was about. So what was it about?

Writing. Writing. Writing writing writing.

Writing.

I've wanted to be a writer for ten years, at least. I love it. I love the act of it. I love the feel of the keys clicking under my fingers as I type away a story on the keyboard. I love the sense of accomplishment when I put together a sentence that I just can't get enough of. I even love the frustration of that comes along with writer's block.

Favorite part of this year? Being given time to enjoy what I love.

Which I totally needed in the month of November because (wait for it) of NaNoWriMo. In case any of my faithful readers (I'm looking at all two of you) forgot, NaNoWriMo (aka National Novel Writing Month) is a month long writing marathon that requires you to churn out 50,000 words of a novel you wrote in the month of November alone. I won, thank you very much, with a whopping 50,607 words, which I am very proud of because on top of writing that monster, I also had school, homework, college apps, and college essays. All of which, I am proud to report, I managed to get through alive. An easy feat by no means. November Productivity Levels: Off the Charts.

Rest of the Year Productivity Levels: Off the Charts in the Other Direction.

That's the one thing that upset me the most. I don't know what it was, maybe I was in a period of mourning after finishing that first book, but trying to write anything else became five times harder than it was before. I honestly don't know what happened. I can't even blame it on senioritis (which has hit me hard in every aspect of my life) because I usually write to avoid school. If I could go back, I would have worked five times as hard to write to make up for the five times harder it was.

Despite that, my passion for writing has never waned (I've even been trying to expand my everyday lexicon to get used to all those words). I've never been more motivated to become a writer than I am at this very moment, when writing is the hardest thing I could ever attempt to do. And I made it through Pre-Calc. That's saying something.

Before this year, though, I was a little embarrassed about it. Embarrassed about my dream. How messed up is that? When I looked around, I saw people wanting to be a businessman or an artist or a chef and those things all seemed like completely viable professions. But a writer? How many people did I see actually want to do that after dreading all those essays?

What this year did for me that nothing else would ever have done, and what I am completely grateful it did, was that it forced me to share with everyone what my passion. I would tell people I was in iQuest, they would ask what that was, I would explain it, and then they would ask me what I was doing for the class.

"Oh, I go home and work on a project."

"Really? What project?"

"Well, I'm sorta kinda maybe actually trying to, you know, write a book."

"Wow, that's cool. What is it about?"

Which I was very happy to hear and very reluctant to answer. So while only a handful of people actually know what it's about, at least two handfuls of people know that I am in fact writing a book. Which is about two handfuls more than there would ever have been if I hadn't taken this class.

So thank you.

I was a little apprehensive about this whole program when I first walked into the classroom the third day of school because of how open I had to be about the whole thing, but I am completely and totally and undeniably grateful for the opportunity this class has given me and I would tell anyone considering this class that it is completely and totally and undeniably worth every second.

Thank you, iQuest.

(After blog post shout out to my mentor Mrs. Peggy Dulle, the iQuest teacher Mrs. Cindy Bonagura, and my mom, sister, uncle, and grandma because this would've have been the year it was without them.)