Che, CP12, and Me

“I was, as we all are, a child of my environment” - Che Guevara, 1960. When Che departed from his home in Argentina in 1952, he was a doctor with a promising career and very little interest in politics. After many experiences with the poor local proles where he learned that, as a doctor, he was unable to help them, he began to turn into the revolutionary hero we know him as today. Che’s political ideals weren’t the only thing that evolved throughout his journey, as described in The Motorcycle Diaries. It is pretty clear that his writing style developed as well. He begins by talking about mainly himself. He describes how he feels, what he cares about, what his motivations are. As he views the (in his own words) atrocities and tragedies along his journey, he begins to write about things like the struggles of other people and especially describing the environment.

I’d like to think that my own style has changed as much. Between all of the writing and reading we have been doing in class, and learning how to control voice and forward writing, I think I have definitely developed as a writer. Ultimately I can’t be the judge of that, but I’d like to believe that  what we have been working on for the last 5 months has helped me gain more control over my writing style. I’ve written a good number of papers outside of English class recently, and have received a fair amount of praise for my word choice and sentence structure in particular.

I don’t think I have quite the control over my writing that Che had, but then, he was a 24 year old medical school graduate who actually had something to write for, and I am just a highschool senior slouching behind a desk, writing in between studying for my Physics and AP Calculus midterms. Besides, we still have a half year left of CP12, and I doubt that this paper marks the end of learning how to manipulate our writings.

As I’ve said in past papers and assignments, I think the subject of the prompt is incredibly important. Che may have had a very captivating form of writing, but how would he sound if he were writing about sewage systems in Tibet? Perhaps about as un-interested as I sounded when I was writing about my DECA project. Sure, advertising may be my career choice, and I may find the sociology and psychology behind it interesting, but that paper is possibly one of the most dry and boring papers I have ever written. Hopefully my conjectures about this paper being at least coherent aren’t completely wrong, as I am writing about a book that I thoroughly enjoyed. Of course, I am writing about myself as well, and I am always an interesting subject (/end egotrip joke).

When Che returned from his journey he said that “The person who wrote these notes passed away the moment his feet touched Argentine soil again. The person who reorganizes and polishes them, me, is no longer, at least I’m not the person I once was. All this wondering around ‘Our America with a capital A’ has changed me more then I thought.” This sort of pairs up with my feelings about my growth in CP12, which, I might add, is more then I can say about almost any of my previous English classes, CP10 being the only possible exception (/end kissing up). I guess what I am trying to convey is that, in my own opinion, CP 12 has absolutely changed my writing for the better.