Vivienne Wu shares how writing and learning are not always a clear path.
The scratch of my pen used to feel alive, like each word had its own pulse, dancing across the page. I loved bending language, playing with rhythm and letting my sentences breathe the way people do when they talk. But somewhere along the way, that freedom started to shrink.
Red marks bled across the page, notes scattered in the margins: “Too casual.” “Too poetic.” “Too much.” Slowly, my voice began to fade beneath corrections. It felt like sanding down something raw and real until a polished, lifeless echo was all that remained.
My writing looked perfect on paper, but it felt hollow — like it had been written by a machine that no longer cared why it mattered. Each time I filtered my voice, I lost a little piece of what made writing a joy. To be honest, I wasn’t even writing anymore. I was performing. At first, I thought that maybe my writing style didn’t belong in the classroom. But the more I wrote, the more I realized the problem was bigger than a few red marks.
School often teaches us to value compliance over curiosity — to fit our thoughts into neat, uniform boxes. The system isn’t trying to destroy creativity; it just doesn’t know what to do with it. It rewards precision and predictability, things that are easy to measure. But learning isn’t always measurable. Growth is messy; it grows in cracks and corners where perfection can’t reach. Real learning should feel alive, not automatic.