When I first came into creative writing I hadn’t had a good experience when analyzing texts with other classmates. My first language is Spanish which already made things difficult as I could not enjoy English texts and was often behind in my assignments. Yet due to a speech impediment making it so I cant roll my r’s it also got me bullied when talking in Spanish and would get me last pick on what paragraph I would read in school. Even if such kids could not speak Spanish themselves and refused to learn, thinking it was below them. Many years later when I finally became fluent in English I was bullied for using Spanish phrases for example “double ended knife”  which is correct in Spanish, but in English you would say double edged sword. All of these experiences had made it so nerve wrecking when discussing poems in creative writing during community weeks. Even if everyone was nice and welcoming I still expected to be teased and ignored by my peers. Thereby I practiced what I would say in my head over and over until it was engraved in my mind and tongue.

Yet of course one day I had a bad day as we all have once in a while and when I have a bad day my mind immediately starts thinking in Spanish. And guess what we were doing that day? You guessed it, discussing poems from our sophomores. This specific poem had interesting punctuation and formatting. At that moment an idea about punctuation came over me like rain over a marigold garden. But my brain could not find the word for that peskey little dot that is necessary in most if not all writing works ; a period. So my mouth being faster than my brain decided to call it a “final point” which is correct in Spanish. When I came to realize what I had just said my heart fell into my stomach as I expected to be corrected and teased. It never happened though, actually someone bounced off from what I said. After being perplexed at how no one teased me, I finally decided to let loose and ask questions when I did not understand a word or phrase. For the other writers in the room it might have meant nothing, but for me that meant everything.