Fourteen young students entered bravely into the unknown classroom. With their innocent eyes wide open, they were bewildered by the brick walls and the dim atmosphere in which they were suppose to spend eight hours a day for the next three weeks. The sunlight that was peering through the narrow windows near the roof of the room filled the atmosphere with a glimmer that lowered everyone’s happy mood. Then the lights flickered on. The room was showered by a warm, artificial brilliance that clearly stated: this was a classroom.
I once was scared of that room. I did not know what was going on nor what would go on once I was in there, but that feeling of frustration did not last long enough for me to ponder upon. Two hours into the lesson, laughter already deafened me, and I was proud to say that I had contributed to that sound of joy. The class started off with a few icebreakers and I got to know each of my classmates. Even though I had already “broken ice” with the eleven girls that I shared my hall with, I felt like I was getting closer to them. After a few rounds of the Name Game, the lesson soon flowed into an activity where we would write a sentence, and pass it along to the next person to contribute to our story. We each had wicked minds and facetious thoughts so we decided to write them down on paper making that part of the story our own. Few occasional snickers filled the room. In the end, most of our stories concluded with death and a fat kid named Bobby who died because of his obesity. The teachers got enough of our personalities that day.
As the days passed, the once shy and timid fourteen of us were now increasingly fearless in both our writing and speech. We began developing voice in our essays and successfully built a personal narrative. We also developed an idea that it was funny to blurt out a word randomly in class. Most of the time, the word was “kumquat” and after its many uses, the word was no longer random, therefore, it lost its purpose.
We also became very close to the teachers: close enough to give them very cool nicknames. At least it was cool in our perspective. Our teacher, Ms. Deonne was changed to a simple “DD” or was it spelled “De De”? We are still arguing over that. Our T.A was changed from Ryan to Fry Rye, but after acknowledging that he didn’t like to be fried, we changed it to UN-fry Rye. He liked that better.
Wherever we, my friends and I, walked around campus, eyes stared and heads turned. We were like a magnet, attracting all the attention of the whole campus and even a few teachers. It was not our amiable personalities that brought us this fame, but rather our voices. Certainly mentioned among others that we were the chattiest kids that they have ever met, soon, we were known as the “loud mob of girls that piss people off”, but we tried to ignore those remarks. My friends and I would randomly wave to people and RAs that we had never met before, and we completely abandoned the “Don’t Talk to Strangers” rule. However, at CTY, everyone is family.
It was not very hard to make friends when you live five feet away from ten other friendly, maybe too friendly, girls who take the same class as you. By the end of the first day, we went everywhere together and became BFFLs (Best Friends for Life). Then there were the three other boys in my Creative Nonfiction course. Their personalities took more time to break into. They often did not talk, contribute or socialize. Outsiders might have thought of them as socially ill, however, we eventually boiled up their friendly side.
Besides the fun and social times, CTY is about learning and adopting new ideas. I remember having difficulties in adapting to the view of someone else. In class, we often have activities where we write in the point of view of someone else. It would always take me forever to start the thinking process of another person’s brain and learn to write from it in less than thirty minutes. We often would be separated into groups of four, and built upon each other to come up with an essay from someone else’s perspective. One time, I was in the group with two other girls and one boy. We had to write in the view of a person under the title of Miss Malaysia. After writing and editing the piece, we thought it would be funny for the boy to read as Miss Malaysia and in the end, we thought right. It ended up being a fantastic presentation; in addition, the boy was later known as Miss Malaysia for the next three weeks.
During the course of Creative Nonfiction, we wrote essay after essay. Our fingers were bruised and they throbbed from the grip of the pen at the end of the session. We wrote personal narratives, travel pieces, newspaper articles, social critiques, memoirs, and poems. After each piece that we bled all our efforts into, the teacher made copies and distributed them out to the entire class. We then had to fix, edit and comment on the thirteen other works that we received. After hours of reading and correcting, we would form into two groups and share our thoughts about the others’ pieces. Some remarks were hurtful but we learned to fix our essays from them.
Down time was something we didn’t have a lot of – it usually occurred before bedtime and during the weekends. However, down time was our period for brainstorming the essays that we had to write the next day. Occasionally, my friends and I would gather into one room and enjoy some food, music and play some cards. These times were few. Most of the time, we would call our families, get ready for bed, or go to the bookstores to refill our necessities. I cannot recall one down time where I was rushed or bored because down time was treasured and should not be wasted.
Revision and change were something that my essays needed, something that my thought processes needed, but something that CTY has no need for. CTY was perfect. I enjoyed every second at the Center for Talented Youth and would like it to stay the same forever.