Discovery Draft

My assignment is to write a Literacy Autobiography detailing my own experiences about writing. Some problems that I may encounter are, adequately describing the paper that I wrote and will be focusing on for this assignment, and how it contributes to my overall experience about writing. Another problem that I have been thinking about is how to best describe in an interesting fashion why I am so passionate about the subject.

My literacy autobiography will focus on a paper that I wrote for a poetry course I felt I did a great job explicating a poem based on textual evidence that I provided and my own life experiences and perspectives. When I received the paper back, I was marked down not because the writing wasn't sufficient, but because my interpretation did not match that of my professor. I was very upset to say the least. Instead of internalizing my disappointment, I decided to have a conversation with the professor about this. She stated that I missed certain meanings or elements about what the poem really meant, and had I not inserted, literally three lines at the close of the poem, the explication would have been stronger. The question that arose and continues to arise is whose interpretation is correct?

I continuously encounter instances where interpretation in English courses seems to be a matter of the instructor's opinion and final conclusion, rather than being open minded to the concept that people view things differently. Generally, I understand an instructor is qualified to teach a course, which is why they are teaching. Because English writing courses in many cases is not a defined science when it comes to interpretation, why then is interpretation of literature, whether prose or poetry dependent upon what the instructor believes to be true. What I would like to convey in this assignment is that students usually write based on their own experiences. In my opinion whether the assignment is to explicate a poem or to write a comparative analysis, the fact is that as long as you can back up what you are saying in a constructive, concise, and well developed essay, then interpretation should be that of the writer's to convey to their reader.

I am wondering how to write about this experience in an interesting way. Do I write it in form of a narrative? Do I simply give factual information? It is an important topic to me and what I have learned about writing and the problems that I have encountered in what appears to be a reoccurring uphill battle......