My first memory of writing went back to the time when I started to learn Chinese characters in my primary school. Something special was that my father is some kind of writer. He wrote poems and told me writing was just a method of expressing myself, so I felt free with writing in Chinese even for the first time. At first I only wrote separate sentences or a brief paragraph to describe a figure, and I would be eager to write down all the things appeared in my mind, even sometimes I did not know how to write the right characters (I used alphabetic instead). I like writing in Chinese and developed the habit of keeping dairies.
However, writing in English is kind of different experience. Although I have learnt English since I was in kindergarten, I always have a process changing the message from Chinese to English in my mind when I do English writing, and considering about vocabularies and grammars bothers my expression a lot. I guess that is because I did not use English so much in China which is not my native language. Most situations for me to write in English are in exams, which are bored, to be honest. Therefore, writing in English is always linked to some dull experiences. I hope this can be changed. Last semester was my first semester studying in the US, and I struggled with writing in my major courses. In the biology class, we needed to write lab manuscripts and posters, which was a challenge for me. I would write the staffs early, bring them to my TA, and edit for several times. I can image what I wrote was still creepy in the final version, but my TA was so kind that she always gave me good grades (maybe she considered about my positive attitude). Luckily, I find out that writing in English becomes more interesting because it is useful now. When I writing manuscripts, English helps me to show my results of experiments and express my ideas on the topics. Now I am also thinking about keep a dairy in English, which may be helpful for my English writing.
Krisa Mie 