Trying on Every Attitude

Introduction

I have chosen one of my Slice of Life pieces to share with the world. I have enjoyed writing about a Slice of my Life every Friday, since it helps me remember things that I would have probably forgotten otherwise. You know, the little moments that you tell yourself that you would never forget, and then a day later you forget? Well, I choose to write about those moments. Writing is a great way to keep things in your head, and so writing about times you don’t want to forget makes a big difference. I chose the piece Trying on Every Attitude, because it’s one of those little moments. It wasn’t like I had the best time of my life, but it was a time I wouldn’t easily forget. Also, Trying on Every Attitude wasn’t one of my best pieces, so I had room for improvement. It wasn’t the worst thing I had ever written, but not something I would send to get published. So, yeah, I made changes for the better.

My process of glorifying and adding sparkles and fairy dust to my pieces are mostly made up of 5 parts: Typing, Checking GUMS, Better Word Choice and Flow, Colorizing it, and Mom-Check. Typing is pretty simple. I found the piece I wanted to make shine, and typed it up on Google Docs. Then I read through the typed piece and the first draft, then compared them to make sure I didn’t leave a big part out, like the conclusion. Then I moved onto Checking GUMS. Basically Checking GUMS is the part where I read through the freshly typed piece to make sure that the grammar, spelling, and punctuation were correct. Usually I read through a piece multiple times when I’m checking GUMS to make sure I didn’t miss anything. Better Word Choice and Flow is where it starts to get fun. I begin by reading through the piece and seeing where words could be better, or where the flow of the piece is more a stormy sea than a peaceful river. After I find places like that, I change words so that the piece has more flavor, and I make the flow more like the peaceful river. Colorizing it is the most fun by far! I change the colors and fonts of different sections so that the piece looks nicer. I use fonts and colors that have a connection to the words I’m using them on. For example, if I have a word like ‘color’, I would make it in the colors of the rainbow. Finally, I have my mom, who is an editor of sorts, check my writing. She tells me things that I forgot, spelled wrong, or could make better. That way I have more than just my opinion on my work. Sometimes I have a friend or my dad read over too, but not all the time. This process is one that I came up with by myself, so it might not work for everyone. But it works incredibly well for me, and so I think it’s worth using.

Trying on Every Attitude

“Ugh! Another?” I complained to my mother as she handed me a pink and white dress that looked like a box. We were shopping for a Bar Mitzvah dress, and we only had a few weeks to find one! My cousin was having his Bar Mitzvah in April, and so there wasn’t much time.

“Yes, but I think these are the last.” My mom handed me three others, a soft pink one, a light blue lacy one, and one with a white top and a silky black bottom.

They all had problems. The blue one made me look like a baby-doll, something a 13 year old tries to avoid. The pink one was just too pink. The pink and white box dress made me look like a square, and it fell off my shoulders. But we were almost done.

Finally, my mom said “Leah, are you sure you don’t want to try on THAT one?” She was pointing right at the black and white one. I really, really don’t like wearing dark dresses, and had refused to try it on so far.

“Moooooooooom!” I whined.

“Just try it! You might surprise yourself and like it. But if you don’t no one is making you get it.” She told me pointedly.

“Fine!” I huffed and took the dress of doom off the rack. I was sure that I would hate it. There wasn’t enough color! But I slipped it over my head anyways, thinking “Well, it won’t hurt me… hopefully!”

Finally, when I had the dress on, I glanced at myself in the mirror.  “Wow! I feel like a princess!” I gaped. It fit me perfectly. The black silky skirt floated around my torso and legs like a cloud, and the white bodice was tight around the waist.

“You look like one too! How does it feel?” My mom questioned me. We had been shopping for hours, and we were both tired. Neither of us like shopping very much, and we couldn’t wait to go home.

“It feels great!” I spun around, my messy pony-tail whipping my face. “Seriously though. I’m a walking, talking party!” I laughed at how weird that sounded. I was really done with dresses, and they were driving me a little bit crazy.

“Uh-huh. So take it off and put on these, and we can get out of here!” She threw my regular clothes at me, and I took off the party dress. I put on my every-day clothes, and sighed.

“Ahhhhh... pants!” I said dramatically. It’s nice to be royalty once in a while, but altogether far too much work. I’m not sure how the Queen of England manages it!

As we walked through the colorful boutique that was Charlotte Russe, my mom asked me whether I was sure about the dress. I replied, “Yes, I’m sure. It’s kind of weird though, usually I’m pushing for more color, and here I am, buying a boring black and white one!”

She laughed. “Well, you can look forward to wearing as many pastel-colored dresses as you want to in the future.”

I realized she was right. I could try on as many dresses, or attitudes, as I wanted, and still be me.

About the Author

All throughout my school life, I have always been an enthusiastic student, even though I am kind of quiet. I get good grades, especially in English and Social Studies. I concentrate in school and outside of school. I make sure that my homework is done every night, and always ask my parents and friends questions when I don’t understand something. (Usually Math…) I enjoy learning, which is always helpful, since usually if you don’t like what you are doing, you won’t do as well.

I have definitely grown as an English student this year. Last year, we wrote a lot of essays, and covered basics, but this year we really broke things down. I loved that we worked on different units at a time. We started with Our Brain Explained, which touched base on nonfiction. Then we had a small unit on poetry, where we talked about Slices of Life, which also deals in “showing, not telling”, like figurative language. All of November was NaNoWriMo, which expanded my horizons on creative writing, and my experiences. I had never written a novel before! Then we dove into our Historical Fiction unit, where we read a historical fiction novel and wrote an essay.  Next, we had our Authors of Substance unit, and I got to interview Megan Shull, which was so cool! After that, we had our recent events unit with Ms. Jones, and we had our Socratic Seminars and worked with Bias and Objective. I also had never participated in a Socratic Seminar, so that was also a great new experience. Last of all, we had our Shakespeare unit, and that might have been my favorite unit, next to NaNoWriMo. We learned about how Shakespeare still influences modern culture, and we each learned about a specific play. I loved learning about “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, since it is such a funny play, and I love the concept of magic. Doing all of these things have led me to be a much better English student, since we covered so many areas this year.

I was so glad that we only read one book in groups, and we moved at a pretty fast pace. Last year, a lot of our time was spent on reading books as a class, which can be fun if you really like the book you are reading, but I didn’t overly love any of them, and The Lighting Thief, which is part of a series that I do really like, I had read before. I read very fast, which means when we read as a class, I can’t go at my own pace. Being able to move at my own pace all year was amazing, since I’m usually bored waiting for other people. We did so many different things, I have grown as an English student enormously. One place that I have grown a lot was the historical fiction unit. I don’t normally read historical fiction, so it was great for me to become more comfortable reading and working with it. I ended up really enjoying the book I read, Hang a Thousand Trees with Ribbons, and went on to read other historical fiction books. I really look forward to growing even more as an English student, and I would specifically like to improve at writing about topics that I don’t really want to write about, and still make the reader feel engaged.