Alpha Biographies

Letter of Introduction

At the start of the year, when I found out that I was going to have a project going on all year, I wasn’t happy at all. Everyone was coming up with ideas on the spot and all I could think was, “Oh god, I’m going to have to be creative.” I wrote down a few ideas, but I wasn’t sure if I was even going to write about them at all. Since Mrs. Conlon used the word project to describe it, I couldn’t help but think that it was going to be some huge thing that took up all my time and stressed me out for no real reason other than the fact that I couldn’t stop procrastinating on it. Okay, so I was half right. But I soon found out that it didn’t take up all my time. I usually got them done by the due date, (maybe a few days after), and then I had about a month and a half, maybe two, to get 7 more of them done. It was difficult at first, I couldn’t really think of anything to write about, I didn’t know how much I should open up or whatever. When I wrote one I wasn’t sure if what I had written was good enough or long enough or if it was too long or if I had a good enough life lesson or if it was a life lesson at all, etc. Whenever I thought of alphas, I got nervous for a second because I wasn’t sure about any of them. But as the year went on, I started to like writing about them. I wasn’t unsure about what I was writing, I knew that these things had changed my life in one way or another. I wrote about friends I had made over the year, family members I held dear to me, (I know, that last part sounds totally cheesy…).

 

I was finally starting to get excited about writing alphas. Some of my earlier alphas were full of me just blabbering on about nothing and then adding some weird life lesson. I’ll admit, my life lessons are still sorta weird, I never really got a hang of explaining how what I had written about affected me. But what I was writing about had meaning now, and I was filling up almost entire pages talking about why they were special to me. I got better and better, and my topics had more and more meaning.

 

Now it’s almost the end of the year. I’ve only got a couple of entries left, (like I said before, I almost always got them in on time), and it seems like just yesterday Mrs. Conlon was reassuring the class that it wasn’t going to be that hard. Here I am, pulling all of it together and showing people a little bit of who I am as a person. This project is supposed to show a bit about our lives out of school and our growth, at least that’s what I got out of it, but in a way it shows our growth as writers as well. Looking back and reading the alphas I had from the beginning of the year, I can’t help but cringe because they were just so bad. They’re pretty embarrassing, to be honest. But they show us changing as people, as well as changing as writers. I think everyone in my class can agree that Mrs. Conlon has taught us a lot and has helped us with everything we’ve needed throughout this year.

 

This project has been long, a bit embarrassing at times, and sort of tiring, but it’s been fun. I’m glad we had to do this project, it’s taught me more than and ‘project’ ever has.