WSORG ARTICLE WRITTEN 9.04.02- "Writing Timeline Snippet"

James Zhang                                                                                                        September 4, 2002
AP Composition

Writing Timeline

1st Grade, Sharp School: I got jealous after this kid knew how to define and spell automobile. I thought I was the only one who knew!

2nd Grade, some other school in New Jersey: The teacher required us to write a journal entry. I didn't finish, and the other kids went outside for recess. I decided to finish my long piece. Writing wasn't that bad.

4th grade: My English teacher was very demanding. Our class had to do around 60 grammar problems a day. My hands hurt after writing fast; my script became rough shorthand. My handwriting has since recovered into the new style: bubbly text and adult script. I even remembered the syntax to this day.

7th Grade English: We'd recently moved to Boston. The school wasn't awfully great. My English teacher seemed like she didn't belong there somehow. I forgot my teacher's name, but she was one of my favorites, one who actually tried to educate and help her students with English. Because I joined the class near the middle of the year, I had to take make-ups of all the tests and quizzes they've had so far- plus read all the books. That was very surprising since no other teacher has ever made me do that (I move quite often.) I enjoyed the class very much and wrote my first persuasive essay. It was for a contest to win Patriot tickets. The topic was how parents were like coaches. I didn't win, and I didn't care for football anyway.

8th Grade 2000-Present Day: I stopped writing essays by hand. It was just too tiring, and my hand wasn't as quick as my mind. I type 120 words per minute and write maybe 30 WPM. I also stopped writing second drafts. I correct and edit as I type on my computer. The thesaurus in Microsoft Word XP is a nifty feature. Thus, I write great essays, save my strength, and brush up on my vocabulary on this machine. (For second drafts collected by the teacher, I just dumb up my final and make purposeful errors.)

8th Grade Edith Backer School, May 2000: I wrote a rather humorous piece for the speech contest on having hamsters as pets to the amusement of my teacher and peers. This gave me the go-ahead to practice with comedy. I tend to use a little absurdity occasionally in my writing.

January 2000: I had to take the SATs in 8th grade for the Center for Talented Youth camp qualification- possibly the worst three hours of my life. When I got my scores back, I had come to a sudden realization that I was pretty good in English and didn't have to focus on the stereotypical math part. English is my favorite subject. I got double 620s.

Johns Hopkins CTY Camp Session 2 July 2000: I knew I had chosen (or my Dad had chosen) the wrong course for me when math classes were seven hours a day and quite mind-numbing. Of course, I had fun, though I knew I wanted to take Crafting the Essay in the later years since my friends actually had fun in that class- not to mention being treated to movies, field trips, and much goofing around. That course would allow me to experience the social aspect of camp more.

2001-Early 2002: This was the time where my writing first entered the online, website scene. It's been three years and 300,000 visitors so far. I didn't write commentaries, reviews, or prose. Instead, I was quite good at writing computer hacking tutorials and the like. Thus, I became a teacher to people of all ages who wished to wreck havoc among friends or corporations. They are "helpful tutorials for any occasion or provocation" and only used within the limits of the law, of course. I also wrote a professional legal disclaimer so the FBI wouldn't shut my site down for the 25th time.

June 18th 2002, Revision eight of my poem "Prelude towards my Affection." I started writing the then 18-line poem on a piece of pink scrap paper while sitting next to a girl I liked. It was for her. It is still talked about among class II- online and in real life- and is admired yet poked fun of because of the whole James-Girl situation. I haven't showed it to her; however, after many requests, I gathered the courage to read it in front of my class, Ms. Spencer, and Ms. Vanaskie. They really liked it. So did the other 700 people who've read it online on my website or when I read it or showed it to them. It's 118 lines and too long to submit to poetry.com like I've done with my other poems. And this was my first real attempt at poetry after hating to read poems, sonnets, and such for so long.

July 14th-August 4th, CTY Camp (same place) Session 2: This time I was allowed to take my desired course: Crafting the Essay! At this point in time, I officially loved writing and wanted to develop my techniques at this intensive introductory course. My instructor, Ms. Jeanne Etkins was my favorite English teacher. The course wasn't just about writing- we somehow weaved philosophy, the way of life, and thinking out of the box into this class. She taught us so many things, and I remember three or four distinctively: 1st- What's your purpose? 2nd- A writer has to be always honest with his words. 3rd- An accomplished writer expresses his idea with the fewest amount of words. 4th- Ethos, pathos, and logos. I almost forgot the last one: "Being funny is very hard; don't even try it if you're not funny." My favorite piece we read had been chapter one out of Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird titled (and we used this name often with full use of the expletive) "Sh*tty first drafts." We went through Seltzer, Goodman, Lamott, Lopez, Kingston and had many fun activities. This course fueled my hunger for literature.

After August 18th 2002: I wrote my latest personal narrative of the August Moon festival for May in BLS ASIA. I cut it down from 4,500 words to around 1,200 and was quite satisfied with the abridged version. Regretfully, May and I had a little misunderstanding: It was supposed to be writing about the event. Id est, in her own words, "we did this, and after that, this happened." I thought my anecdotes were fine but yeah it was writing about places. No problem- I have another addition to my writing section on my website.

August 24th 2002: Miraculously, I received my second nomination into the poetry.com (international poet's society) for "Colour 253." I was actually disappointed and shocked that my worst poem will be put into their text compilation. I spent about 4 minutes on that (I refer to this as "five minute poetry"). The one that made it into semifinalists before was written in 8th grade on a paper napkin in gym class ("The Landing" search for Zhang, James on poetry.com). Maybe they just want me to buy the book?

August-September: So far, I've received around 200 emails from my website visitors (www.wolfyserver.org) saying how they enjoyed reading my news and writing section even though that wasn't the focus of the site. Hacking, software exploitation, and infringing copyrights were. I counted the words in my web pages and they amounted to around 41,000. The news section is a great place to practice my writing and to collect my thoughts. Being heard and the acclaim is some sort of narcotic and a couple of reasons why I enjoy writing.

September 4th, 2002: First day of AP Composition. It appears to be a friendly and open class for doing the thing I love. The only reason I'm here is because I enjoy writing and that Mr. Sanford allowed me to make up the entrance test. My essay was about AOL Instant Messenger and idiolects.