My Struggle - Original Writing

Nobody should go through what I have been through. I’m Dora Rivkina. I am 19 years old and am the second out of three girls to be born into a Jewish family. My sister Liesl is three years older than me. I look up to Liesl. She is my role modle. There is no movie star or pop star that can ever top her. My sister Elaine is two years younger than me. Sheis still learning to speak German because my parents tought her how to speak English first. She looks up to liesl also. We act like liesl and try to dress like her. Both of my sisters are really smart and are good at figuring things out.

When I was a small child, I didn't like writing unless I was writing something I wanted to. As a result, most of my school work was done half-heartedly, because they were all research projects that we had to do. I didn't have any issues with my writing, and my handwriting was pretty good at my age. My favorite books were the Harry Potter series. I thought I was pretty cool to be able to read such a long book, so I bragged some to my friends. The only topic I liked to write about was fantasy. In second grade, my mom made me start writing every day in a wide ruled journal, so I wrote a story about the Legend of Zelda, a video game I liked. I wrote about it every day for a long time, maybe a year, until I kinda gave up, and wrote the last page

From a young age, I have always been taught to understand the value of education and learning. Reading and writing have been emphasized to me as tools for success, that should always be constantly improved, for as long as I can remember.

First, a little background on my family. I have two older brothers, the first born is 16 years older than me and the other is 14 years older. I also have a big sister who is 13 years older than me. Then came me. My mother had had a few pregnancies between us which caused the gap. When I was born, all my siblings were well into their teens. I was spoiled, treated like royalty even. My life was

As I finished my first semester of college, I was super excited and thrilled when I realized not once did I have to write a paper for any of my classes. There were some paragraphs and summaries here and there but they were pretty standard. When I realized that I was going to have to take Rhetoric 105, a writing course, I freaked out not because there would be a lot of readings but because of the writing expectations. Obviously, I am a decent writer if I was able to get accepted to multiple universities and get good grades throughout my writing career. Yet there is still this nervousness whenever I realize I have to write a paper. I have multiple struggles and strengths when it comes to writing. One of the struggles I face every time it comes to writing a paper is actually getting

One of the things I feel very strongly about is writing. I like how you can say whatever you want knowing that it is your opinion. You have freedom over what you say. Some things that are written could be seen as controversial, but in the scheme of things, most of what is said is okay because at the end of the day you have the right to freedom of speech. Personally writing is an escape from life, whether it is full of pain, sadness, chaos, or just plain boredom. A few years ago my imagination was bright. It held quite a bit of good ideas, but somewhere along the way to now I lost most of that ability to think of the most random plot lines or ideas to write about. My creativity slowly burned out, kind of like a candle. Then one morning not too

When my sister and I were in middle school, my perspective of my sister was horrible. I despised her and didn’t want to have anything to do with her due to her ignorant attitude. For example, when I was feeling depressed because my older cousins were ostracizing me, she didn’t notice and didn’t stand up for me. I felt angry at her and I saw her as an irresponsible bother that happened to have my bloodline. However, after we moved to South Pasadena, my perspective of her began to change. Because we moved into a new place full of strangers, we only had ourselves to relate to. I wasn’t very efficient in making new friends and I began to eat lunch by myself. My sister, realizing that I was alone like she was, began to pay attention to me and ate lunch with me. She was aware of my friends and people that didn’t like me, and she stayed with me when my cousins tried to leave me out on playing with them. My sister became my best friend and I realized that she was not a stranger that I should hold a grudge on but was someone that I could depend on when I was

So, after just a few visits with my dad, I learned to not only accept the new addition to my family, but to love her. I promised myself that I would stay by her side and would lead her through the confusing world we live in. I knew that I would do everything I could to insure that she never got hurt. This lasted for a while, and I began to view my family’s situation as “normal”. That’s when my dad decided to throw in another curveball; that weekend I entered my dad’s apartment and made my way to Sofia’s room per usual, except this time when I opened the door I was surprised to see that where one twin bed used to lay was now replaced with two cribs. This was my dad’s way of telling us that him and his fiance were expecting again, twins this time. Thus, my dad’s fiance moved in along with her two kids from her first marriage, expanding the number of siblings I had from 3 to 8 in less than three

In high school I challenged my writing skills by taking advanced placement language and literature. Both courses assigned essays that required scholarly text to support my points and ideas stated throughout the paper. My biggest takeaway from these classes was that having textual evidence from reliable sources will help strengthen my writing, also known as ethos to persuade the audience. During my junior year I grasped the concept of ethos, pathos, and logos, how each could be used to shape writing concepts or perspectives. Personally it takes me a little bit of time to adjust from different writing contexts that need to be addressed, but I always thoroughly analyze instructions to reach success. I improve as a student when I practice analyzing

in a long black coat, stood a man – his eyes pierced her skin as he

“…As for all the seniors, I want you to challenge yourselves this year and don’t think you’re going to cruise through to graduation.”-Mrs. Smith, County High School. Although some seniors in high school refuse to take a hard schedule, I decided to take a challenging composition course my last year of high school and learned more than ever before from it. My teacher, Mr. Bacz, focused mostly on vocabulary, grammar, and how to right an essay. Each one of these subjects combined to give me a year of hard work, which eventually paid off.

Have you ever been given an assignment where you say to yourself, “how the heck am I going to do this?” or maybe, “what am I supposed to write about?” Well that’s exactly how I felt, thought, and did with this writing journey. Coming up with something to say about my writing journey has been difficult. I would be bold enough to say nearly impossible. So impossible it’s like trying to get a camel through the eye of a needle. Okay that might be an exaggeration, but it has been difficult. The idea that I have a writing journey I understand. But thinking of an event or something that has made my writing the way it is has been difficult. So, what I’ve decided to do then is to write about my writing journey writing this paper.

Every child learns differently; some learn easily, and some have difficulty processing the information that is given to them. My parents taught me the basics of reading and writing, they bought me books and letter blocks to form words with. In my experience, it was easy for me to learn how to read, although, my struggles began with writing. I can not put the blame on my teachers, although, they weren’t much help either. That was until I entered Middle School, my sixth grade English teacher changed my whole perspective of the subject.

My biggest struggle in writing would be starting my introduction because I never really know what information to add in my stating my thesis statement. Although, one way I’m trying to improve this struggle is by either adding small quotes or definitions to hook the reader and to add some info about my topic. Furthermore, one essay that I feel reflects my writing the best would be the midterm essay. I picked the midterm essay because even though it was timed I still took my time and carefully picked which examples I thought would best represent my opinions. In addition, I feel using the quote “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world” by Nelson Mandela was a very powerful way to keep the reader interested. Ultimately, while I still haven’t overcome the obstacle of writing an introduction I know I’m slowly starting to find my way towards my goal of not struggling when it comes to starting my essays.

I come from a four-person family. My mom and dad have always been in my life therefore they are the people who raised me. After seeing my parents have a successful marriage, it has influenced me to want the same thing in life and having my first marriage be my last. I have an older sister who is 23. While growing up, me and my sister had a very close relationship. As we grew up, we started to drift apart. I learned a lot from being the youngest child. While being 3 years younger than my sister Taylor, watching her grow up and deal with situations taught me many personal life lessons. Watching her grow up taught me the good and bad things in life and helped me follow the right path. While going through school, I already knew what to expect when it came to the class description and the teacher just by having my sister go through it just a couple years before me. Even though being the younger sister, my whole life is all I know, I couldn’t imagine