The Big 150: 14, Education: What was your favorite subject at school and why?
My favorite subject at school was called a variety of things throughout my educational career. Sometimes known as Reading or as Language Arts when I was younger and the subject was separated, I felt most at home in English class.
It's not surprising to me that English was my favorite subject in school because it was the one class in which I could read material I liked and practice my creative writing. Even the papers that I had to write that weren’t necessarily focused on my own creativity as much as they were focused on analysis found me studying and writing about works I actually enjoyed, looking for hidden meaning, foreshadowing, and symbolism in the greater plots and storylines. It’s also no surprise to me that so much of what I do now in my kooky career path is study scripts and characters for their subtexts and hidden meanings and what is really going on - written between the lines.
I think, too, that I was very lucky along the way in that I had wonderful English teachers who encouraged my love of words and that my parents were also teachers who believed in reenforcing the importance of education without making it a chore. My parents let me read, practically, whatever I wanted and always asked me what I thought about what I’d read. I think the 1-2 punch combination of great parents and great teachers encouraged reading and writing habits that still exist today.
I can still name every English teacher I’ve had from elementary school to boarding school to college and am 99% certain I could guide you to every classroom in which I took an English class. I have a freakish memory when it comes to certain things, so this fun fact also doesn’t surprise me (though, to be fair, it's probably from years of writing things down).
I still read and write today, and I’m really happy no one was able to kill that joy along the way, though I’m sure we’ve all encountered people who try to dull our light. So is there a lesson for today? Maybe it’s that the things we love as adults are actually the same things we loved as kids, but we never took the time to sit down and think about it. Do you have something you still do as an adult that you loved as a kid? And does it tie into whatever your favorite subject was at school?
To a lifelong love affair with words and books and to the smut I read now attracting all kinds of looks,
Johny
ICYMI: The Big 150