Response to Chapters 6&7

Surprisingly, I hate reading text materials that are boring, but...

I was very interested in the way that Pipher describes the effects and responsibility that writers have on society.
On pg 77, this really caught my attention:

"The ideal writer's temperament includes the ability to tolerate ambiguity, handle intensity, wrestle with self-doubt, take risks, and accurately assess criticism. Most writers must be able to withstand poverty, loneliness, and anguish."

That quote really stood out to me because that's something that I lack strength in when I write. It is exceptionally hard for me to maintain my composure when people criticize what I am saying, or how I am saying it. Last semester for Journalism, I had to write a paper that was roughly about 90 pages, that dealt with poverty in society, and if minimum wage would increase or decrease the number of families on poverty. I had to watch videos, and construct interviews that really hurt me. I watched a documentary on a mother who worked at KFC and had 5 children... struggling indefinitely with her own life, and the lives that she had brought into the world. After I spent the semester doing all this research, I realized that the underlying problem with poverty and serious issues is that we don't make education as big a deal as it should be, and we put down people's writing, and critique people's work to the point where they give up, and lose hope in something they once really wanted.

When I teach my third graders over the summer, when its time for them to write about a summer experience, or favorite memory, you think they would get really excited, but some of them don't, because they don't have good experiences, or because when they write, the teacher tries to change the experience, and make it almost fictional. When I teach them how to write, I try to preserve as much of their own interpretation as I can. I would never want to take away their overall memoir.