This is the end, beautiful friend, the end.

It has always been difficult for me to write endings. How do I bring closure to all of the thoughts I have just unleashed? How do I contrive to bring everything together in a way that is concise, powerful, conclusive, thought-provoking, memorable, and whatever else a conclusion should be? The best way to end this class, I believe, will be to look back on what it has come to mean to me.

There was a time, back when I had "free time", before high school and college and leadership positions and jobs happened to me, when I imagined being a writer. Learning to write, to express ideas in any style and context, could be learned, I felt, by study of vocabulary, grammar, forms of writing, from traditional to unconventional, and clever writers' works. The art, the creativity, the mark of a true writer, I felt, lay in the ideas themselves. Real writers, I imagined, have piles, stacks and heaps of these in their cluttered studios, entire novels diagrammed out, character names scribbled on the nearest scrap at hand, or plot twists imagined in the middle of the night.

There was a time when I felt like a writer. Or, really, I felt that I was moving in the right direction. I was building vocabulary, learning about styles, and, most importantly, accumulating ideas. This class has let me recapture that. Again, I have collections of scribbled ideas, scraps of inspiration everywhere, found in pockets, backpacks littering my desk and hastily saved to my laptop.

It takes a real effort, but this class has proved to me that despite the school and the work, writing can cram into the demands on my time. It's amazing what a strict deadline (and sleep deprivation) may produce from those small pieces of inspiration that I save. This semester is my reminder to keep collecting them.