During my childhood, and I guess even still today, I was always following my older sister's footsteps. She started taking acting classes, voice lessons, and dance lessons, and then I started to three years later. She never played a sport and neither did I. I loved doing those things, despite the fact that I did not come up with the idea to participate in them on my own. Technically, neither did she, because it was our parents idea to put us in theater camps, where we discovered our mutual passion for theater. Besides our shared interest, we also went to the same private school for four years together, and I enrolled into the same college as she and she has to spend her last year of college with me on the same campus. Because I am the younger sibling, there are people who think that I want to be like her; that I chose to involve myself in theater because she did; and the crazy people who think that I only decided to attend Muhlenberg, so I can be with her. Don't get me wrong, having my sister on the same campus as me for my first year of college is comforting, but she was not focus of my mind during the college decision making process.

Now you may be wondering what the above paragraph has to do with my love for writing; well the greatest thing that separates me and my sister a part is my dream for becoming a writer.

Unlike participating in theater, beginning to write for fun, outside of school, was my own idea. I remember the day I started to write. I was nine years old and it was the summer before the start of fourth grade; I was extremely bored. That year we had just got our first puppy, Coconut, who I did not like very much at the time, because I was afraid of dogs (I love her now though). I was staring at Coconut, because I guess there was nothing good on television. Somehow, I was blessed with the brilliant idea to write a children's book about my puppy.

I remember sitting, in the household office, typing at the family desktop. What you are not aware of is the fact that I was then and even currently still a couch potato; I mostly watched television, and I did have a reading phase, which is a passion that is returning to me because of all the great books I am reading in college. When I wrote that first time, it was before I had a laptop, and I guess I did not think of the idea to use a pencil and paper instead. I sat at that desk for maybe three hours typing my first story out of my own will; I called it My Day with Coconut. The story was about Coconut doing daily activities, like humans do, such as going to school. My parents encouraged me and told me how proud they were of me. Besides being a couch potato, I have ADHD, and I was an extremely hyper child, so my parents were also surprised to see that I was able to sit at a computer for hours, without a single break, not even for the bathroom, creating stories.

After that first story, I would write in my free time, even during vacations on a poolside chair, sequels with the intention of creating a series. Every time I got a new dog, we now have four, I would add them to the series. Inside the book, I made them siblings, and I would introduce a new character by saying that he/she was adopted. I remember there was one book, when I made one of my dogs Teddy, who sadly passed away last summer, jealous because the family adopted Bella, another one of my dogs. In that story, Coconut was helping Teddy understand that sometimes families change, and that even when you are no longer the youngest in the family, you will not be ignored, and your parents will always love you. Thinking back to that story now, I realized that story and probably some of my others, had a great message: to not be upset because you are going to get a new sibling and will no longer be the baby of the family.

Sadly, I am not sure where those stories are, because that computer stopped working, but I am fairly sure my dad has saved copies of them somewhere upstairs. These stories about my dog have great potential; if I was able to write them at age nine imagine how sophisticated I can make them now, ten years later.

Although I loved to write, and would continue occasionally to do so for a few years after that; I neglected my passion with the start of middle school. I mean I did write for the school newspaper, and contributed to it greatly and my articles were on the front page for most of the issues that were released during my seventh and eighth grade years, but I rarely ever wrote on my own, outside of school. It was probably because I was swamped with a lot of school work, and did not have the energy to write. I also wanted to be a doctor, during those three years, and I am a premed student, because I still have an interest. However, with the start of high school, I gained my passion of writing again. I remember sitting in Dr. Fidler's Humanities English 9 class, he was a teacher who was tough and it was hard to get his respect. I remember he loved my writing, which was an honor, and that class reminded me that I wanted to be a writer and that I need to work towards my passion.

After my freshmen year, I was successful in all my humanities English classes, but I never found them fun, because there was not an opportunity for me to be creative. However, finally in my first semester of my senior year, I took a creative writing class, I was free to find who I truly was and still am as a writer. This was the first time I was allowed to be creative in my assignments, instead of having to write the standard analytical essays. I loved every moment of that class, and I did not dread fulfilling homework assignments; I had fun being creative in them.

At the end of that year, at my high school's academic awards ceremony, when I received the creative writing award, I was shown even more that I have a talent. It was not getting the creative writing award that made me love to write even more; it was hearing a part of one of my stories, that I wrote for class, read to an audience. Hearing the audience laugh to my work, showed me that I have a gift; I can do this; I can be a writer.

My name is Arielle Moss; I am a premed, English major, with a minor in creative writing; I am a writer!