Diani Alvarenga
Bio
Writing will never be a waste of my time.
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Stories (242)
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Emotional Intelligence in Relationships is Essential
Effort for Emotional Intelligence If you want your relationship to last, having emotional intelligence is a must. A relationship that does not involve any effort is a relationship that will be filled with endless problems.
By Diani Alvarenga2 years ago in Humans
Creative Writing Forever
There is no doubt that I love to write, it is my dream to become a feature writer, or a contributing writer. I would love to see my stories in magazines. Before I made the decision to major in English, I thought that I should not go for an English major because I believed that I should only go for the things I am good at, I am not a poetry expert, nor expert in understanding a text right away, I am not a proofreader; so I used to think that writing is not going to get me anywhere. But that is completely untrue. I remember how in one of my poetry courses, my professor wrote down quotes from other writers and what they had to say about writing. One author said “Writing is easy. You only need to stare at a piece of blank paper until your forehead bleeds.” I realized that there is no such thing as writing an article in two or five minutes; writing requires you to be patient, to clear your thoughts, to sometimes do research. Even when having passion for something you write about, you still need to take your time. I remember that in my Latin X literature course we read a book called I am not your perfect mexican daughter and already just by taking a look at the title I knew what I would be reading about. My initial thoughts before reading it were that I would be reading about a girl who does not want to follow tradition, a girl who feels misunderstood by her family. I really liked reading the story, and I felt that I connected with the protagonist (Julia) in the story. Like the protagonist, I am also from Chicago and I used to live in apartments that were infested with roaches; and living like that was the just the worst. Another way I felt connected to her was in how she did not focus on being perfect, she wanted to be herself and not get judged for it. Reading this story made me think of my boyfriend’s family because they do tend to think that a woman needs to do certain things to be considered a woman. So, what does all this have to do with me majoring in English? Well, for me, my journey in this pathway has helped me to see that I do not need to be perfect to become a writer; this is not to say I can just write sloppily, but it is perfectly okay to struggle the first couple times. When I joined the Chronicle, an online magazine at North Central College, instead of getting told I would no longer write because I lacked skills like SEO or grammar, the editors were kind enough to explain to me how I can improve my articles. Joining The Chronicle became one of the turning points for me in continuing my major in English; because of The Chronicle, I finally knew exactly what I wanted to do with my major in English, which is to become a feature writer for a magazine. Despite my boyfriend’s family thinking that a major only matters if I make a lot of money and that they see it as a waste of time for me to be writing, I feel that writing is my vocation, and I cannot just quit just because I may fail a couple times, and if there is something that I learned while majoring in English is that even though it can sometimes be annoying, or stressful, I feel that every other major is like that; we can not like certain things about our majors and at the same time also love it. I really did not want to take a course on British Literature, however I did enjoy some of the texts; I liked reading Modern Fiction by Virginia Woolf. In Modern Fiction Virginia Woolf wants writers to write what they feel in their hearts, not write for the pleasure of others. I have been following Woolf’s advice because I want to not feel limited in my major. I think that a major should allow you to grow, it should not suffocate you and to me being an English Major means being able to explore different ideas, and being open to different point of views. Reading Modern Fiction, I would consider it to be another turning point because the essay helped me to understand that I do not have to follow a specific method to become successful in my major, I should not feel controlled as an English major but instead feel free, I should feel free to write what comes to my mind and not write what others would like to read because if I write for the pleasure of everybody else, it just feels like I am not being my own person in something that I want to do for the rest of my life.
By Diani Alvarenga2 years ago in Education
