Personal Narrative: What I Want To Be When I Grow Up

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I’ve always known what I wanted to be when I grew up. A tougher task, figuring out what I was going to be.
As a child, the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” constantly rang in my ears. The answer jumped easily to my lips: “I want to be a writer!” The same look—a mixture of disdain and surprise and condescension—always adorned the face of whoever received that reply. Eventually, I realized that my response to “What are you going to be?” had to be different than my response to “What do you want to be?”
It wasn’t until junior year that my answer to those very different questions became the same.
English classes were never truly appealing before AP Lang; five paragraph essays weren’t exactly my style, and the idiosyncrasies of grammar were ignored—to teachers’ consternation—if I wanted to accomplish a …show more content…

“Jackie,” she began softly, “Could I hand this out?”
Out of all the outcomes possible, I hadn’t expected this. Luckily, I was eloquent, poised, and collected as I replied, “Uhhh.”
“To all hours of AP Lang,” she clarified.
Words returned to me sluggishly. “You liked it?”
“You could edit,” my teacher admitted, “but Jackie…”
“Yeah?” I enquired, mouth dry with hope and uncertainty and the slightest bit of fear at the possibility I could see unfolding before me.
“If you’re not careful, you could be a great writer,” she smiled, teasing tone offset by her earnest gaze. It hit me suddenly that my writing caused this reaction, this excitement, this pride. “What are you going to be when you grow up?” she abruptly asked.
The spark of a dream, suppressed for so long, was stoked by my shuddering breath of realization. Releasing the air slowly, a fire caught inside me, blazing and burning and begging for release. I concede to the flames.
“A writer.” I tasted the words uncertainly, testing them as they fell from my tongue and into the world for the first time. I smiled.
“I’m going to be a writer when I grow

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