In Class Proofreading Exercise, Jennifer Kerr

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I was seventeen years old and in grade eleven the day I got the news. I'd spent the weekend at a youth conference, but I'd been distracted and unsettled the entire time. My parents took picked me up from the conference on Sunday afternoon and took me and my sisters out to dinner. We all know knew that big news was going to be announced at this meal, and were scared out of our wits. Mom saidit said it out loud as soon as everyone had placed their meal orders. She'd gotten the test results back on Friday. It was cancer.

That was an unbelieveably unbelievably difficult and enlightening year. My mother went through several major surgeries and months of chemotherapy, spending weeks in the hospital and almost all of her time in bad bed. I didn't I only told a few of my closest friends what my family was going through, but never talked about it beyond acknowledging that it was happening. (move this) . Depression and emotional instability The drugs that my mother took made her unpredictable and depressed, and the helplesness helplessness that my dad experienced tore him apart. I was afraid to go home and endure the moods, and the crying and the intolerable tension, and yet I was afraid to talk to anyone about it and endure sympathy I didn't deserve. I only told a few of my closest friends what my family was going through, and never talked about it beyond acknowledging that it was happening. It wasn't until my mother had gone into remission and returned to her normal life that I realized how stupid I had been to keep it to myself.

The process of writing this was difficult. Writing about my own life seems to make events that really happened to me seem fictional. Seeing the words on a screen make the events seem less real, and less personal. Writing to analyze inform, or as entertainment is very different and a lot easier, because I am expressing my ideas and knowledge, and not my own life. Writing without deleting anything or editing as I went was also very difficult for me. I'm used to constantly re-writing as I go along, and it was impossible to stop myself from backspacing and unconsciously editing as a part of my normal writing process.