From an email to a friend:

My passion is to write well. This has especially consumed me recently. I want to write everything and I want it to be magnificent. I want to read every book there is about writing and take every class offered and somehow perfect my abilities. Sometimes, I think I write somewhat decently. I can write emotive reflections that make people cry. However, then they want me to write a Torrey paper and I can hardly meet the page minimum, let alone compelling arguments. I write news articles for the Chimes. I like writing news articles--I like interviewing people, gathering data, doing investigative reporting. But then when it's time to put it all together, to organize it into paragraphs and structure, I get all confused. I truly hope that as I take more journalism classes this challenge will lessen but right now it is simply frustrating. And I am constantly reminded that emotive crap is basically useless. It receives temporary fame and excessive reactions but it doesn't last. And I want to write stuff that lasts. I suppose the reason why I am telling you all this is because you have impressed yourself to me as someone who desires to write well, who is more and more succeeding in doing so, and thinks about it an awful lot.