“Don’t color outside the lines!”

 In class, we observed the drastic contrast between how Audubon and Dillard describe birds in the passage. Audubon’s logical style of writing amazed me in the sense that he was so descriptive and observant with his study. However, Dillard’s vivid and imaginative form of writing brought me back to a time when I had a curious and creative mindset. I think I speak for most high school students when I say that school has somewhat diminished our creativity. As a child, we used to constantly ask questions and play thought-provoking games. Life was filled with endless wonder and we were eager to learn. However, as grade school rolled around, the school system slowly and unknowingly molded us to believe that we should be ashamed of making mistakes. This led us to believe that there is only one way to solve a problem, resulting in the urge to memorize everything rather than understanding the concept out of fear of getting something incorrect. What is the point of memorizing statistics, such as those largely prevalent in Audubon’s passage, if we do not understand the reasoning behind them? Each and every one of us start the beginning of the school year with a mindset of letting our creativity soar, but are drained day-by-day by the constant desire to think logically and inside the box. We all have an imaginative side to us that we would love to unleash, but we grow accustomed to the suppression of it. Thankfully, some classes such as 11 AP English serve as an outlet for our creative minds that have been trapped for so long. Hopefully, this can be the case for all classes. One day, I would love to stop associating mistakes with shame and questions with stupidity, but instead be able to describe something as simple as a flock of birds as “an unfurled oriflamme”.