It was 2:45 on a Tuesday afternoon in my English 12 class. Only four more minutes until the bell rings. It had already been a boring class so far (like it was ever interesting). All the students crowded near the exit. The teacher shouts "Hey! get back in your seats and wait until the bell rings, or else you're all staying for extended day classes!" As usual, nobody listened to him. I didn't mind staying anyway. What else was I to do at home or around the neighborhood? After all, it's in the middle of nowhere. The nearest town was about an hour's drive north. What he thought was a punishment, was actually an opportunity for me to get away from home, the feeling of being isolated. This was not the case only for me, but also for some of my friends as well. I turned to writing to explore new thoughts, adventures that I made up, and most importantly, it kept me busy. This helped me to be able to write a five-page paper for my history class, government class, and the dreaded 10 page mid- term papers.

While in junior high, I didn't learn as much as I hoped for early on. The teachers didn't push anyone to write formal or structured essays. I feel this hindered me as a writer and as a student. It was mostly learning compound sentences, verbs, nouns, just the basics. In the sixth grade, I was admitted to the advanced education program. I feel this helped me out far more than what I would have learned being in the regular class. I was challenged with my writing and reasoning skills on paper.

Throughout my years at Tohono O'odham High School. The English classes, until my senior year, were mostly on literature and poetry. In English 12 class, we did sentence diagramming and used structured essays in the first semester. We also did weekly writing papers, which were known to us as WWP's. These were informal essays on something that we wanted to write about. It could have been about your dog or your cat. I took these opportunities to write about myself, where I would be at in ten years, or things relating to my future. It helped me with grammatical errors, punctuation marks, and how to put something down on paper and not having to slave over it. English classes were easy for me. I was an "A" student in English throughout my high school years. One of my favorite English assignments was the "Night Visitor" paper. This paper let me get creative. It had to be of an imaginary meeting with some sort of person or significant thing. It was also a contest of creative writing. It was to be judged and graded by a panel of teachers. The winner was given an award or prize. The incentives were not needed for me to write this paper. This paper was one of my many adventures I had while shutting out the "Outer world". I feel this is one of my most creative writing papers.

When I first arrived at Baboquivari High School, I did not know what to expect of my English 12 teacher. I arrived a week after the spring semester started, and got off to a bad start with my homework and quality of work. A new setting seemed to make my writing skills regress. After some time passed by, I slowly got back into my "writing flow". My grades took an upward turn. The work at B.H.S. was not the same as my previous high school. It was more on literature and poetry, stuff that was taught during my first years at T.O.H.S. Transferring was a very awkward experience for me. Not much was learned for writing, as in papers, But it did make me think more about other thing to incorperate into my writing.

After graduating from Baboquivari High School, I went to summer school at Pima Community College. I had gone there the previous summer also, and I took a writing composition course there, which I passed with a grade of a "B". This writing course helped with the different aspects of "college writing". It was not a difficult course to complete and to keep up with. I feel this course helped me out with transition to my current setting here at the University of Arizona.

My experiences with writing has been an interesting, and fundamental thing for me. Writing will continue to affect my life and education. I think of writing as a form of getting away from my surrounding and physical self. I my experiences, expectations of college English have been both good. I hope it will continue to be like this throughout my time here at the University of Arizona and later on.