Option #4: Sarah Hauke

         While reading the first 17 pages of The Extraordinary Works of Ordinary Writings, by Jennifer Simon, I started to recall a certain journal I stumbled across in my families library. This journal was actually written for me by my mother. On the cover was a very familiar face, Winnie the Pooh. Being the curious person I am, I opened it. To realize this wasn’t just a normal everyday journal. It contained everyday experiences of my mother’s pregnancy with me. On the back, my mom’s cryptic writing told me what this journal would contain. I had to keep on reading. The following pages I was referred to as baby or sweetie given that I didn’t have a name yet. My mom didn’t even know if I was a boy or girl. This journal has influenced me by creating a desire in me to write my own personal diary about my journey through college. I want my kids to look back on my journey through my words and show them all the challenges and fun times I had. One-day I hope they can learn from my mistakes just as I learned about my mom and myself through her journal. Supporting Jennifer Simon’s outlook on “ordinary” writings, and journals like my mom’s I agree that these writings have such a greater impact than what meets the eye.

          I know it seems strange to be talking about this but I couldn’t help but picture my mom writing this journal, and feel the affection she felt for me. People rarely think of these writings/expressions as a form of literature but just associate them with freedom of expression. While reading the work of Jennifer Simon I couldn’t help but think otherwise that maybe these journals, scrapbooks, or letters that seem so unimportant to everyone, could be a missing piece of a families history. Journals can inform us on something we never knew or existed. “Ordinary writing, writing that is typically unseen or ignored, is primarily defined by its status’ as discardable… But they may just as easily be something else” (Simon, 5). Simon discusses the importance of these “ordinary” writings, and how something simple as a scrapbook or a cookbook can tell us about a person or an event. Just think, if Anne Frank didn’t write about her experiences during the Holocaust, the world may never know about the most shocking event in history, from the eyes of an oppressed teenage girl. Through these writings and ones like it I have learned that no matter how simple or how ordinary something may seem it could have a lasting impact on someone. Never underestimate the power of ordinary writings.