Vontesch Barnes
“On Becoming a Writer”
Strayer University – English 115
Assignment 1

“On Becoming a Writer” Russell Baker “On Becoming a Writer” conveyed how he had a dream to become a writer. The main point that I took from this passage was that things happen unexpectantly. If you have a dream entertain it, because you never know where your pursuit will lead you.
Russell looked at writing as something that was done by only the rich. He never imagined that becoming a writer could be a career that he could potentially get paid from. What I took from this was that he treated writing as a hobby or something liked he liked to do. Although writing was Russell’s dream, he still only thought of it as an Interest until he met Mr. Fleagle. It seemed that even though he had not been taught by Mr. Fleagle, he already had a preset judgement of how he was going to be. “He was said to be stuffy, dull, and hopelessly out of date. To me he looked to be sixty or seventy and prim to a fault”. One point I got from this was that the answers to life’s mysteries, even your dreams may come in a form you wouldn’t expect.
Russell didn’t like English, the assignments or writing papers for the class in general. After some time in Mr. Fleagle’s class he was given an assignment called “What I did on My Summer Vacation”. This is the assignment that eventually lead him to discover his passion for writing. Instead he wrote a paper titled “The Art of Eating Spaghetti”. Russell pulled from a past memory that was a great moment for him. That single moment and feeling of that moment allowed him to tap into his ability to write raw. Another point I think Russell was trying to make is that he took a risk and followed what he believed no matter the consequence.
Once Russell turned in his paper to Mr. Fleagle and began reading his paper out loud it gave him a sense of purpose as well as