How Storytelling Changed My Life

We all have our stories to tell, and we’ve been telling them as a species for thousands of years. We’ve changed the ways we’ve told them, but the lesson they hold don’t wander too far from the lessons of our ancestors. We use imagery, much like what was once painted on walls, but in our time told through descriptive words. We compare our character traits with those of our grandparents, and their parents before them, and we find similarities that transcend centuries. Storytelling is in our blood, and we continue to honor this tradition by passing down stories with our loved ones and friends. The beauty in sharing family stories, is that we are all different, yet we find ourselves discovering common ground between us. Different walks of life relating in ways we sometimes forget to imagine ourselves. Though my

My very first semester I was taking WRIT 101, and I was excited to get back to writing, since at this point in my life I had written anything in years. I was usually quite good with research topics, or scripts where I was never the focus, but I hadn’t counted on was a course load of personal essays. For the first time, I was struggling with writing. My grades didn’t reflect the struggle, I put forth the effort, and always got my assignments done, but writing about myself had proven to be a tougher act than I initially counted on. Throughout my life, I had always focused on telling the stories of others, fictional characters or people that I had known, but seldom did I write about myself, how I felt or about my life experiences. I never thought I was interesting enough to be put on paper, like my story didn’t matter. If it wasn’t for the support of my wife, and for the sake of the future I was going to provide for my child, I may not have finished that semester in one