My essay on a constructed language:
When I was just entering high school, I happened across a book while at the grocery store that I looked interesting. I bought the book and became totally engrossed in its story. The book was “The Fellowship of the Ring,” written by J.R.R. Tolkien, the first part of a trilogy known as “The Lord of the Rings.” A trilogy of movies was eventually made based on these books (although watching them is not as good as reading them). At the end of the third part of the trilogy, the author included a few appendices concerning the history and backstory to the main story. One of them detailed the alphabets and grammars of several languages he constructed for his story. Looking back, I can see now that reading this gave me my first inclinations that I had a general interest in languages.