The Truth in a Cliche by Samantha

The Truth in a Cliche by Samantha - April 2016 Scholarship Essay

I thought I was a natural poet, because I didn't realize that no one would really crush your dreams in elementary school. As a result, I was more than excited when I was able to take my first creative writing class my junior year. I actually thought that would be my big break; I would be lying if I said I didn't hope that I would write something so profound that my teacher would publish me right then and there. As the class went on, I realized there is no such luck that would make someone a natural poet. I was consistently surrounded by the next Shakespeare or Melville who sat to my right. I felt like a shack compared to the towers that surrounded me because my writing was constantly lined with clichés like a militia. As if no matter what I did, another cliché would spring from my pen.

And then one day, my teacher told us something I will carry with me for the rest of my life: there is a truth in the cliché.

I didn’t get it at first; as a writer, you hate clichés. Scratch that, as a person, you hate clichés. Someone, somewhere, got famous off of something sounding like “my love is like a rose” and we’re just sitting here hoping our thoughts didn’t get copyrighted already. It was true that there is a “quiet before the storm”, but why was my teacher so happy we were writing these phrases?

One year later, I finally understand what she meant. She obviously was not encouraging us to write clichés, that was my first thought. She was truly trying to get us to realize that just because something is a cliché does not take away from its importance. “My love is like a rose” is just the start to the garden of feelings you are planting for someone. She wasn’t asking us to give up right there, she was asking us to dig deeper into what we mean. Words are all a person has at times, and there are over a million of them in the English language alone. She wanted us to use them, but use them wisely.

If I understood the importance of words much sooner, it is possible I could have had a different life. I might have had the right words to say to my friend when she felt like she wasn’t enough, or said the goodbye he deserved when he left, but as they say, “you live and you learn”.