I'd like to think that I nailed down the art of penmanship. I first wrote out the letters of the English alphabet the summer before first grade, and I've been trying to make improvements since. In second grade, when the entire grade was learning how to write in cursive, I got extremely competitive. I would compare my friend's cursive letters with mine, and I would ask classmates if they think mine was better.

There are times when I would look at other people's letterings, and if I liked it, I would attempt to copy the style. However, I couldn't bring my handwriting to look exactly the same. Oh, little Margaret disappointed herself in multiple situations.

Skip forward a few years to middle school. Little me is still trying to improve her handwriting. But for once, I was proud of it. My handwriting no longer looked like the letters from a letter-tracing book. But by the end of middle school, I felt very unsatisfied. After organizing old school papers that I would never burn, I cringed at the writing. Everything was childish.

Skip forward a few years to sophomore year of high school. After working on countless study guides, my handwriting became more uniform. To fit all the information in between tiny spaces, the spaces between words increasingly became smaller. To save even more space, the round letters became gradually became more angular. A month in, my entire handwriting went through a huge transformation. It became distinctive from everybody else's, and I loved it.

I've been told on multiple occasions that my handwriting was wonderful, on how it deserves to be a font. I've been told that my handwriting is so nice and pretty, on how it is so uniform and unique. I absorbed all the compliments, feeling proud of myself.

It wasn't long before I noticed the downsides to it. My handwriting was hard to read.

I somehow make the spacing in between my words smaller than the actual letters of my words. All my letters are the same size, so it was difficult to distinguish the lower case from the upper case. All my letters are angular, so they all look like lines. I don't curve my letters as much as I used to. My downstrokes are much thicker than the upper ones, so you wouldn't be able to see anything but vertical lines.

Not to mention, my history teacher deflated my ego when I got my first DBQ (document based question) writing back. On my paper, she wrote, "Can't read."

I admit, that particular essay wasn't the best. To say that I was disheartened would be somewhat of an understatement, but I eventually got over it. To my dismay, the same teacher told me that I needed to work on my handwriting in person weeks later. Right before the end of the first semester, she told me that I needed to practice cursive for the AP exam because my handwriting was suited for that.

"It's neat," she told me, "But it's hard to read."

She said that nobody would be able to read my print handwriting easily, so it's best to switch in order to gain the most points possible during the exam. From there, she proceeded to tell me that she once had a student who could've received six points on his writing, but only got a three because it was illegible.

That was enough to motivate me to doing something I would've never thought I would in high school — working on my handwriting.

My friends were preparing for a party, and I was out sick. I FaceTimed them, and they hung up a couple of times jokingly saying, "Work on your handwriting." With nothing to do, I decided to give it a go. I used tips and exercises from the internet, but my cursive wasn't meeting my standards. After many tries, I gave up and decided to go back to print.

My friends didn't help with this either. They made fun of my handwriting and often called me out for it. In one particular occasion, my English teacher saw my notes for a history book, and she complimented me. Then my friend was like, "No, Margaret, show her your true handwriting."

The day before, I was on a study date with a couple of my friends. I was writing quickly, and my words were barely legible. The reason for this was because I didn't write the words with the intent of going back. As someone who needs to write to learn, it was to help me understand what was happening in the text. But my friends saw it, made fun of me, and wouldn't let that go.

Rest in peace, my sense of accomplishment. That was a great way to bring me down.

Next thing I knew, my teacher recommended getting a new pen, knowing that my penmanship could not be fixed. I understood why, but I'm someone who finds one thing I like and stick with it. I have my G2 pen, and I didn't want to use anything else. I reluctantly switched pens, and she said it did help a bit. I personally think it didn't, but I was glad that my teacher cared enough to be talking to me about handwriting after all this time. After that talk, I felt even more motivated. If she was paying so much attention to how my words looked, then she must believe in me.

I wanted to prove everyone wrong, but people tend focus on the negative aspects and oversees the positive. My peers only point out my handwriting when it's illegible and not bother with the legible. Knowing that they'll call me out in the future, I continued writing more with all sorts of writing tools, including different types of pens, pencils and markers.

My handwriting made huge improvements the last couple of months. I made it a goal to make my handwriting look good when writing quickly. I started focusing more on my letters when copying notes, and it had a significant difference from before.

Now, people just make fun of me for my illegible handwriting. I had a couple of people joke around and say that I need a handwriting book. I'm used to all this bickering, but as someone who wants everything to be perfect, I'll be working on my handwriting in the meantime.