Literature courses and your development in writing

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rohlo

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How did school/university English or literature classes impact your writing?

For me, it was in spite of school literature courses I grew to love literary fiction and want to write it. I didn't like the novels I was forced to read in high school English and so I started to read the writers I felt were neglected at school, which really helped my writing and learning to read as a writer.
 

Marlys

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I'd say high school had a positive impact for me. I had great English teachers, and loved most of the books we read--and at least learned how to read the ones I didn't like critically. I also had a good relationship with the school librarians, one of whom created a reading list of books she thought I might like. I felt encouraged both as a reader and a writer.

Sorry you had such a bad time. I gather that's not unusual, so I'm happy to have had a very different experience.
 

C.bronco

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I had many great experiences. One of the best was my junior year in college when the professor read The Waste Land aloud to us in its entirety. It was amazing.
 

rohlo

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I'd say high school had a positive impact for me. I had great English teachers, and loved most of the books we read--and at least learned how to read the ones I didn't like critically. I also had a good relationship with the school librarians, one of whom created a reading list of books she thought I might like. I felt encouraged both as a reader and a writer.

Sorry you had such a bad time. I gather that's not unusual, so I'm happy to have had a very different experience.
My AP English teacher had a political axe to grind, rather than letting my class really enjoy the books we read and discuss them. I had a novel outlined but the class ate away at my creative energy energy until I got hooked on Modernist literature.
 

lacygnette

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When I was in junior high, a teacher lent me a book (I had finished the assignment and was bored) that she took back the next day, saying it was too "adult" for me and she was worried what my parents would say. Of course I immediately wanted to read it and any other adult book I could get my hands on. I'd say most of my reading choices were on my own. What we read in school was a joke. Lucky for me my mother had enrolled me in a great books club and so I at least formed a basic love of good writing. Critical reading is still hard for me...
 

rohlo

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I gave up on YA/kids books around the seventh grade and just started reading adult science fiction, which brought me to literary books.
 

Jamesaritchie

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I was always a reader, including literary novels, so I loved all literature courses. The ones at college were especially good because we were all adults, and the professors almost always knew what they were talking about.

I never got away from such reading, and such discussion. I love it.
 

CrastersBabies

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High school had no impact on me as a writer, really. But I had pretty negative experiences at that time with academics. Literature classes in college really focused more on theory for me, so I didn't get much craft at all. Just basics like setting, dialogue and theme (which most voracious readers pick up on innately).

I never really had a teacher show me how to "read like a writer," until I took creative writing classes.
 
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lacygnette

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The read like a writer thing is interesting. For years I read voraciously but only as a reader: immersed.

Now that I'm working on writing, my reading has changed. I'm always seeing POV slips or admiring transitions. It's the rare novel that sweeps me away. I read one recently and realize I need to go back and read it like a writer. It was so good I'm sure I can learn something from it!
 

Tazlima

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The worst teacher I ever had actually did me a big favor.

I was always a bookworm and in high school I was put in the honor's English program. My sophomore year, however, I got a teacher who genuinely had it in for me. I could give numerous examples of how badly she treated me, but one will suffice. We had a multiple choice test one day, and when I got it back, I discovered that several of my correct answers had been marked wrong. I compared notes with a classmate who had received 100%. Sure enough, we had the same answers.

Being naive enough to think it was an honest mistake, we approached the teacher to get my grade corrected. However, the teacher refused to change the grade. When asked why the same answers were marked as right on my classmate's test and wrong on mine, she replied, "I changed my mind about which answers were correct."

It quickly became obvious that no matter what I did, I would not get good grades in her class, an issue which was compounded by the fact that she taught most of the honors classes. I was left with two equally lousy option.

1) Stay in the honors program and resign myself to getting bad grades.
2) Return to the easier classes and be bored stiff (plus it wouldn't look very good on a college application that I had quit the honors track halfway through).

My mother knew about the issue, but she didn't realize just how serious it was until she got a phone call from the mother of one of my classmates. This particular classmate and I had never liked each other. The girl I considered my enemy went home in tears because I was being treated so badly.

Her mother had an interesting idea. Why not have me take the placement test at the community college down the road? I could take English classes there and, through the magic of dual credit, they would count toward my high school English requirements.

That's the story of how I became the only student in English 101 who was too young to drive. By the time I graduated high school, I had already completed 5 college-level English classes with a 4.0 GPA (and since I was enrolled, I went ahead and took some other classes too).

Not only did I get the satisfaction of going over the horrible teacher's head and excelling, the English faculty at the college was awesome. After high school I went to a college out of state, so if I hadn't had that terrible teacher, I never would have gotten to study under the terrific ones.
 
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frimble3

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My mother knew about the issue, but she didn't realize just how serious it was until she got a phone call from the mother of one of my classmates. This particular classmate and I had never liked each other. The girl I considered my enemy went home in tears because I was being treated so badly.

Her mother had an interesting idea. Why not have me take the placement test at the community college down the road? I could take English classes there and, through the magic of dual credit, they would count toward my high school English requirements.

That's the story of how I became the only student in English 101 who was too young to drive. By the time I graduated high school, I had already completed 5 college-level English classes with a 4.0 GPA (and since I was enrolled, I went ahead and took some other classes too).

Not only did I get the satisfaction of going over the horrible teacher's head and excelling, the English faculty at the college was awesome. After high school I went to a college out of state, so if I hadn't had that terrible teacher, I never would have gotten to study under the terrific ones.
Sorry to derail, but that was a wonderful story about how people can have different sides:
that someone who, in YA fiction, would have been your enemy, and just another obstacle, was the cause of your getting a better education than you would have if that teacher had had her way. (And that her mother had evidently given your problem some thought, not just handed the problem to your mother to deal with.)
I'm glad that it all turned out well for you, although it must have been Kafkaesque at the time.
 

djunamod

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Great question. When I was in junior high and high school, I wasn't interested in literature at all. I read bestseller romance novels (like Danielle Steele and Judith Michael). It was only when I did my undergraduate degree in English where I was introduced to a wide range of really high-quality literature and the classics that I grew to adore them. I totally think that they helped me shape my writing. I was writing bad romance novels at 16 (I don't have anything against romance novels - I was just clueless at it) and my writing style and content really changed because of the stuff I was reading during undergrad and grad school. I still really only read classic literature rather than contemporary even though my writing is contemporary.

From the stories here, it seems to me that part of making the connection between reading and writing has to do with how you were encouraged by teachers and parents. My parents did not encourage me to read at all (although they think they did). My mom's family was working class and never had time to read so for my mom, reading was admirable but ultimately, a waste of time. I can remember my father sitting down to read a book (his family actually did read) and my mom hassling him to help her with the housework because, in her eyes, if he was sitting down to read, he had "nothing to do". For her, if you weren't doing physical work, you weren't working.

Djuna
 
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CrastersBabies

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The worst teacher I ever had actually did me a big favor.

I was always a bookworm and in high school I was put in the honor's English program. My sophomore year, however, I got a teacher who genuinely had it in for me. I could give numerous examples of how badly she treated me, but one will suffice. We had a multiple choice test one day, and when I got it back, I discovered that several of my correct answers had been marked wrong. I compared notes with a classmate who had received 100%. Sure enough, we had the same answers.

Being naive enough to think it was an honest mistake, we approached the teacher to get my grade corrected. However, the teacher refused to change the grade. When asked why the same answers were marked as right on my classmate's test and wrong on mine, she replied, "I changed my mind about which answers were correct."

It quickly became obvious that no matter what I did, I would not get good grades in her class, an issue which was compounded by the fact that she taught most of the honors classes. I was left with two equally lousy option.

1) Stay in the honors program and resign myself to getting bad grades.
2) Return to the easier classes and be bored stiff (plus it wouldn't look very good on a college application that I had quit the honors track halfway through).

My mother knew about the issue, but she didn't realize just how serious it was until she got a phone call from the mother of one of my classmates. This particular classmate and I had never liked each other. The girl I considered my enemy went home in tears because I was being treated so badly.

Her mother had an interesting idea. Why not have me take the placement test at the community college down the road? I could take English classes there and, through the magic of dual credit, they would count toward my high school English requirements.

That's the story of how I became the only student in English 101 who was too young to drive. By the time I graduated high school, I had already completed 5 college-level English classes with a 4.0 GPA (and since I was enrolled, I went ahead and took some other classes too).

Not only did I get the satisfaction of going over the horrible teacher's head and excelling, the English faculty at the college was awesome. After high school I went to a college out of state, so if I hadn't had that terrible teacher, I never would have gotten to study under the terrific ones.

Just awful that you went through this. I had one girl in my ENGL121 (Freshman Comp) class in college who was doing the dual credit thing in high school. She was such a wonderful student. She was exactly where she was meant to be.
 

Anna Spargo-Ryan

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I loved high school English. I was fortunate to have some truly wonderful teachers and various kinds of extended learning opportunities outside of school hours. I always felt supported and encouraged.

The subjects I did at university were less excellent, but that might be because I was 10 years older than the other students and always felt self-conscious about my contribution to the classes. I was often older than the tutors as well, and more widely published, which didn't make me popular with them either.

I'd like to try again with some post-grad subjects, once my kids are in high school.
 

Andieee

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High-school English courses didn't have such an impact on me and my wrting style. Or my desire to read. The teachers were awful, they didn't know how to stir our interest in reading and creating literature. They went by the book and focused on the theory and less on the actual creating.
Now that I think about it, I was lying. High-school English had a small impact on me. I was usually forced to read whatever the teachers had in mind and I would usually dislike every word of those books, thing that made me want to write and read stuff that I actually enjoy.
 
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