Math was my favourite subject, followed by the sciences and then history, throughout all of primary school and the first couple of years of high school. It wasn’t until about Year 10 that I realised that my strength was actually in English (well, writing, specifically).

Before then, I struggled in English a lot. Actually, I still struggled with it after that. My grades for creative writing and essay writing—particularly persuasive, which I’d never have picked for myself given my personality—were high, but I always fumbled with comprehension portions of testing and because of my disrupted primary school years, my grammar wasn’t amazing. How possessive apostrophes work didn’t click for me until Year 10. “It’s” and “its” was a nightmare throughout primary school. It all seemed simple once it was able to process in my brain but all of the “rules with exceptions” confused me a lot throughout school.

Another reason why I disliked English was because of my handwriting. Coupled with not understanding grammar rules like everyone else, I hated constantly hearing about how my writing was messy and my slope was never good enough. Even as a kid I thought it was a weirdly shallow thing they were grading us on. As an adult, I have a better understanding of why it’s important to guide students to develop neat writing, but I still maintain that children’s efforts shouldn’t be dismissed just because they’re not writing at the correct slope. It matters even less now that almost no one uses handwriting in a professional setting. Or maybe that’s why it should matter more?

Anyway, my handwriting is still a scrawl, but that slope is very ingrained in it. Teachers also hated the fact that I would bend the rules and constantly start sentences with conjunctions. But I love doing that. And no one can stop me now.

Grammar as a kid was very much written with a vibe rather than concrete consideration to the rules. There were a lot of little things I would do with my writing that were—and are—part of my writing personality and I had a hard time compromising with them just to hit a better grade mark.

I believe I’ve talked about this before, but my learning style did not work well with many of the schools I attended and whatever I knew how to do with having “learned it” quickly became undone when teachers tried to “teach” me it. There isn’t just one manner of learning something, there is no true “proper way”, but there were definitely subjects I learned “inefficiently” (I can’t really think of the best word right now) that I would benefit from re-learning. It was just hard.

Other than those difficulties, English teachers loved me. And it took me until year ten when I realised I was good at writing to realise why because of how much I resisted the subject. What also helped was that I was an overly considerate and conscientious kid so it meant I was—almost—always well-behaved. It was a combination of showing general respect for others and fearing a few of my guardians (¬_¬”)

Do I still hate English? A bit. Persuasive essays and creative writing aside, I don’t know if I loved much else there. I used to get frustrated when we would interpret the meanings of books because there was often a “this is how you’re supposed to interpret it” and for me, writing was still an art, and so the only person I would trust with an “absolute interpretation” would be the original author. Later on I had English teachers that were much more flexible and welcoming of individual interpretation but from primary school and early high school, I just saw English as a rigid and stuffy subject.

Now, I know English is much more than that and the world of writing is incredible and I learn more and more every day and have a greater appreciation for books I read and stories I write. Do I want to go back to school and try again? Absolutely not (ᵕ—ᴗ—) I won a lot of awards for English from Year 9 onwards but I wouldn’t want to do it again.

I am curious as to what others call “English” around the world. I’ve heard it referred to as “Lit” before (assuming it’s short for literature) but unless you’re learning the language “English”, is it still called “English”? (╹ -╹)?