Thank you! No, my writing style hadn’t changed. I started writing short stories when I was 7, and by high school, my voice was pretty established. My friends read my stories, and it was pretty well known that writing was my thing. I remember finding her class easy and breezing through assignments, which I think she resented. I know I’ll never know, but considering how she treated me versus other students, and considering the other times something similar happened (in third grade I was put into ESL even though I spoke English as my first language) I deeply suspect a lot of it was racist attitudes. Texas public schools. Of course it’s too hard to prove without a doubt, but it’s that feeling that leaves a bad taste in your mouth, especially with how determined she was to prove she was right and get me into trouble.

So in short, no, my writing style hadn’t changed, and if it improved, it definitely wasn’t because of that class, where I felt particularly uninspired. I wrote stories on my own time. I saw her assignments as busy work to get out of the way as quickly as possible, which made this incident even funnier. I really didn’t put effort into the paper she was so obsessed with.

Thanks again for reading!