Writing Assignment
Back to the scholastic grindstone, coarse and painful though it may be. This means that I have writing classes again, and that I will be producing literary material of dubious quality on a regular basis for professors that will probably regret my decision to attend college in Nebraska.
So in the effort to further my apathetic liberal arts education, I will present you with my short writing assignments when I turn them in, or whenever I think about it. This is the first writing peice for my �Writing for the Media� class, we had about 45 minutes in the lab on friday to write this. It could be about whatever we wanted to write about. She just wanted samples of our writing to guage our grammar level. I chose to write something that sounds really deep and profound but ends up by mocking its own nature.
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Timothy Bendt
JMC 318
The frustrations of life are complicated and numerous. Each person faces a struggle between their desires and their circumstances. Our struggles often go unnoticed by the outside world. From what little of life and the universe that I have observed, I conclude that the common symptom of human struggle is the efforts that we expend in hiding it from the rest of the world.
Cultural influence and personal life experiences lead us to cover all that is closest to our hearts, our greatest prides, our deepest joys, the most terrifying fear, and the sharpest pain. Suppressing these portions of our true identity hide what we are from the people around us. It is perfectly acceptable, and utterly ignored, that each person around us is presenting a false two-dimensional image of who they are. Sometimes a dose of truth shapes our mask, but often we simply show the world what we want them to see.
For many the greatest fears are that they would be discovered as an imposter in their own life. We maintain the façade of coolness in order to protect ourselves from the pain that comes when our lives are open to another person’s sight. For many men some form of shame drives them to live a life that is opposite to their true nature. Merely from my own observation I believe that many women hide behind a mask of feigned perfection for some reasons that I will likely never understand. As with all things relating to women, my comprehension is about a millimeter thick.
Dimensions are given to another person’s soul. In the English language we refer to a person as deep or shallow. I believe that we are referring to the thickness of a person’s shell. A shallow person allows only the most obvious emotions to show through, and rarely talk about anything beyond light conversation about their favorite sport, or another person’s problems. A deep person is a person that appears to have some concern for the more important aspects of life and emotion.
We all build up a shield around our lives and prevent others from getting close to us. It takes different forms for each, because it attempts to cover a different pain or fear for each one of us. Though I find that writing is an effective way to organize the chaotic thoughts that stream through my consciousness, I still feel like I am maintaining a shield around myself. Writers may open up a vein and pour themselves into their work, but that work is still only as revealing as they wish it to be.
To a certain extent writing is the most impersonal way to communicate some extremely personal concepts. The appearance of deepness in all essays is still mostly a trick of smoke and mirrors that we show the world in a vain attempt to say, “Hey look at me! I am important!�? The greatest pitfall that a writer faces is becoming so self-important that you find your soul’s validation through the words that you put on paper.