Purple Pen

Courtney Krol
LaFever
WRD 103
13 September 2018

Purple Pen
As long as I can remember, my mom told me I was a great writer. I sat at my desk trying
to avoid writing my final paper over ​Crime and Punishment​ for my senior high school English
class. I could write a rough draft in an hour and keep it with minimal changes as my final paper.
However, I do not enjoy writing. I usually attempt to get my papers done as fast as I can, but I
want to do it well the first time so I have minimal correcting to do after. This probably is not the
best way to approach almost every paper I have written in my academic career, yet I wonder how
I became the writer I am today. How did I get to the point where I could get by with only one
draft of a paper?
In seventh grade, my class divided into the dreaded regular, honors, and finally to the
gifted and talented programs. Coming into a new school, I had to take the English placement test
which only covered rhetorical strategies and vocabulary.
“How is this test supposed to show my true knowledge of English? There’s not even an
essay portion for them to sample my writing,” I thought to myself.
I got in the car after the test and my mom asked me, as every mom does, “How’d the test
go?” All I could do was blankly stare at her smiling face. She could immediately tell that
something was not right about my exam.

“Well, we’ll wait for the results and make due of what class you’re put in. Don’t worry
about it, this won’t define you as a student.” She looked at me with the most sincere eyes and I
knew that everything, despite what class I was placed in, would be okay.

When the letter came, I was placed in regular English, not even honors. I could not
believe it. Running up to my room, in tears, I did not want my mom to see me as I ran by the
laundry room. I wanted to hide my letter from the middle school so that she would not find out
how big of a disappointment I was to her and my dad. My older brother was in his freshman year
of high school and had above a 5.0 GPA out of 4.0. How was I supposed to live up to that if I
could only be placed in regular English?

“Oh God,” I thought, “Mom and Dad are going to kill me. They’re gonna think I’m dumb
and that I’m not as smart as Kyle. I’m going to be the dumb one of the family. I knew I wasn’t
good enough for them.” All these thoughts rushed through my head as I sat in my room crying
because I was a failure. Failure, the one thing that I am still to this day most afraid of.

I have not failed a paper or anything relating to English since that placement test. I was
able to focus on anything from the past right now because I did not want to write this essay.
Crime and Punishment,​ a great book, but why does my teacher need my thoughts on the main
character’s development? Not like my opinion is going to matter or change hers.

Mrs. McBride, English 10 AP. Man, I hated that class. Her purple pen scribbled out all
my ideas in every essay I turned in.

“Red pen brings a negative connotation to students’ minds,” she would say to our class.
“Really, so that gives you permission to scribble out more of my opinions with your
purple pen. I won’t think it’s negative just because it’s written in purple instead of red? Wow.”

That is all I could think everytime Mrs. McBride held that dreaded purple pen in the air and
started the same speech. I did not get through one AP prompt and think, “Yeah, this one is going
to be better than the last.” Her purple pen had a voice of its own.

“My opinion is right, therefore, yours is wrong.” On and on and on. As I would flip
through the pages of my essay I would think, “I can’t do anything right in this class.” Nothing
aggravated me more than seeing all those purple marks and getting to the end of the paper to see
a seven or eight at the top of my paper.

“If my grade is this high on the AP scale then why in the world is she marking so many
things wrong? How can my opinion be wrong when the question asks, ‘What do you think about
this essay and the author’s ideas and how it relates to…’, how can I have an incorrect opinion?”
That purple pen tore my writing to pieces, slowly deteriorating my confidence as a writer. When
the AP Language and Composition test came along, I tried to implement all the corrections I
received throughout the year. My essays were flowing from my pen, I even finished with plenty
of time to spare. Some of my best work yet. I reread my essays in order to make sure I corrected
anything the purple pen would dare to touch. Done. When I got my AP test score back a couple
months later, I opened my computer to see the most disappointing grade ever, a two.

“The purple pen has been lying to me the whole time! What would have happened if I
wrote my essays in my style and not the way the pen ‘trained’ me to do?” I was fuming. The
purple pen that had told me, “You’re wrong,” hundreds of times over the year was proven
incorrect when it came to the AP scorers.

That was my concern with the essay I was currently facing. ​Crime and Punishment​, the
classic AP Literature book. Perfect for thousands of seniors to read and be tested over in the

month of May. However, from previous teachers constantly putting down my writing, I realized
it was time to create and essay in my style and say what I think is right. My opinion does matter,
my teacher does not have to agree with it, he or she should realize and appreciate my unique
thoughts. Ever since, I have written essays on my time schedule and it has deepened my thoughts
and opinion on the topics at hand. My opinion matters just as much as the next person’s, my
teacher does not have to agree, but I am not afraid to write about how I feel. This has shaped me
as a writer today and I will feel confident in my writing, whether or not the opinion may be
popular.