Nayeon Kim/Week 2 assignment/Tuesday 11am

My attitude toward writing is like a love-hate relationship. My mother always says how my writing about a rabbit impressed her when I was in kindergarten. That was when I found out that you have a talent in language, she said. However, my childhood memory of writing is not that rosy as she described. Everyone who grew up in Korea would remember how we had to write in the journal three to four times every week during the vacation. Most of them would also have the memory of how they used to write the all the journals at the end of the vacation week, as the punishment for not diligently writing every week. I was not unlike any other average Korean elementary school student. Once, I had to write more than twelve entries into my diary on Sunday before the start of the new semester. The overall quality of the writing was mediocre and some of the writings were even unreadable because of some smudged letters. I despised writing then.

Such attitude still shows up now and then when I have a lot of writing assignments awaiting to be commenced, but I have managed to grow fond of writing as time passed. One of my key traits is that I like to make a point. I like to urge my stance in some controversial social issues and persuade people to believe in what I think, and I am also quite good at it. When I was in high school, a philosophy teacher who taught a writing class in after-school courses praised me for my writing. Since I work harder when I get positive feedback for my work rather than criticized, I tried to write more smoothly and persuasively. My thoughts toward writing shifted from back-breaking labor to a piece of cake I can deal with light-heartedly. I started loving writing about my opinions.

However, I have a confession to make. As I have mentioned above that I maintain a love-hate relationship with writing, there are some sorts of writing that I do not like and cannot enjoy much. Those are creative writing and writing about myself. In the case of creative writing, I guess I have a faint glimpse of potential referring to the professor's comment from my creative writing last semester. Even the compliment could not restore some interest in creative writing, which would have encouraged me to work harder in other cases. This is very strange because I love to read literary works. The other thing that I do not like is writing something about myself. In fact, this assignment is uncomfortable as well. I love to distance myself and use facts to shed a light on the issues, so describing who I am and what I think about myself is awkward. By taking this course, I look forward to change my dislikes on some of these writings and completely fall in love with writing.