A world of endless fiction and imagination can only be explored by the most curious and avid readers and writers. People like Madison Christ, junior, take this world by the reins and ride into the literary future.
Recently, Christ was selected to participate in the Fir Acres Workshop, a summer writing program for high school students offered by the Lewis & Clark College. The program is a community of writers who share a commitment to the passion of writing. Applicants were required to fill out an application form that included a free-response section responding to this prompt: Tell the story of a time when words, whether written or spoken, sung or performed, have had power for you. The program runs from July 1 to July 13. Christ’s acceptance to the program made her happy.
“I have not been more excited for something since I can remember,” Christ said. “I am looking forward to about a million things there, from getting to stay on the campus to attending classes for something I love to do.”
Christ’s acceptance to the program only supports her love of English even more.
“Her exceptional reading and writing skills landed her in a place in Honors English,” Sue Raivio, English teacher, said. “She has remarkable abilities to analyze literature and then translate those ideas into her writing.”
Christ’s passions for reading and writing trace back to when she was little. Though she has other preferred subjects, her best subject is English. She feels that English is not for everyone.
“It [English] breeds understanding of people and a wider range of thought and imagination while I find math extremely limiting,” Christ said. “What is the fun in an exact answer?”
As an avid English student, it’s a correct assumption that Christ would want a future with English in it. Many students have a rough idea of where they will attend college while some on the other hand, may have had their dream college set in stone since freshman year.
“I want to see and experience as much as I possibly can so that when I tell my children about when I was younger, I can maybe have stories that can match my own fathers,” Christ said. “That is one of my ultimate life goals.” Christ’s father told her mostly his childhood stories of running away but returning.
While Christ wants to follow the natural path of aspiring novelists, her dream plan is completely different: dropping out of high school, not going to college and joining a Renaissance festival. Maintaining grades and choosing a college is a natural part of a student’s life, but Christ prefers to take classes she likes, such as French IV, even if they have nothing to do with anything reasonable, since Christ is all about living life to the fullest.
“By senior year, I will have wasted seventeen years of my life preparing for the next four so after that, I don’t want to do any more preparing,” Christ said. “I refuse to waste my youth.”
And saving her youth she does. With her driving passion and the assurance that she will have a good future, Christ takes her pen and smiles at the face of academic struggles. As they say, the pen IS mightier than the sword.