Raised up in the south, although born in Baltimore, Maryland, I have considered North Carolina my true childhood home. I, Zoē Bethea, am one in a family of four which includes my sister, my mom, my dad, and I. My sister and I have always been like two peas in a snug fitting, heartwarming, yet slightly dysfunctional pod. When it comes to my parents, they have always been my role models and some of the people I trust the most in my life. They have built our family on the important values of honesty, trustworthiness, and love.
I was blessed with a comfortable childhood filled with family, friends, and memorable moments. My overall family is pretty big, so holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving were always a huge event that led to a packed house. Birthdays were made to feel very special, and I would always be surrounded by my friends from school and family members as well, despite the random location of the party.
As I became older, I started to take interest in music and took piano lessons for a while as well as being involved in the choir at school. Looking back, those days were filled with what seemed like tedious work and practice, yet it yielded enriching and valuable results. The
friends that I made during our rehearsals and the skills that I acquired through those lessons allowed me to develop into a student, and person, who was more well-rounded, could think in a dedicated manner, and could connect with their peers.
Those skills then followed me to my middle and high school years and mentally prepared me to love writing and its process. At my private school, Caldwell Academy, we had to take specific writing and grammar classes, that at the time seemed unattractive, but helped me to develop my skills and abilities to write. By the end of middle school, I wrote a mini thesis, that was about 10 pages, on my topic of choice. I remember through that process enjoying being able to string words together in such a way as to articulate what I wanted to say in a senseful manner.
Activities and assignments like those combined with the classical books that I was exposed to, gave me the confidence to write and say more in a better fashion. I began to understand that, yes, paragraphs and papers have a specific structure, but the manipulation of the presentation that that body of words can have is endless.
I culminated my high school years with an 8,000-word thesis. That assignment was not without its challenges and corrections, but by the end of the whole project, I had become a better writer, through practice, and began seeing myself pursuing it as a career in college.
Now, at High Point University I’ve been asked, “Why Am I Here?” Fortunately, I can begin to answer that question! I am now here at HPU as a Journalism major, and taking a journalism class, to improve my writing skills in general, but also to begin journalistic writing specifically. This will be the first time I have been exposed to this type of writing style, so I am eager to learn more and gain proper experience.
