Every year I volunteer at the Jeanne Geiger Crisis Center, an institution that aides victims of domestic abuse. They host an annual walk against domestic violence, which I have both participated and volunteered in. But working at this event and assisting with various office tasks throughout the summer feels very different than participating in other community service events. Rather than merely earning community service hours, I am giving back to the very people who gave everything to me. At age seven I joined the 61,000 children who are sexually assaulted annually. The initial effects were catastrophic but through my personal grit as well as the assistance of people such as those at the Jeanne Geiger Crisis Center, I was able to overcome a hurdle that otherwise may have proved detrimental and …show more content…
emerge into a resolute individual. Being betrayed by a trusted loved one hurt me in ways that no child should ever be hurt.
I felt angry, confused, and scared. I didn’t know who I could trust or where I could feel safe-- feelings that are overwhelming and utterly terrifying for a second grader. Post-incident, everyday events became obstacles that terrified me. Taking a shower or staying home alone seemed insurmountable. It was difficult to distract myself from the aftermath when the effects were so infiltrated within my daily life. I found comfort in school, which I considered a safe place. I discovered my love for words and became a voracious reader, where I rapidly progressed to reading levels far beyond that of my peers. That year I began the Harry Potter series, which transported me to worlds far different than my own. I could relate to the characters, many of whom had been hurt in one way or another. The Jeanne Geiger Crisis Center even held a Harry Potter camp throughout February break where children who had underwent similar pasts could attend. I identified with the characters in these novels, which not only contributed to my love for reading, but opened the gates to a lifelong quest for
knowledge. But overcoming my looming sense of fear went far beyond reading fantasy novels. Recovery from any type of trauma is not easy, no matter who you are. In the face of anguish, people either wilter, harden, or rise above it. While still young, my reaction to what occurred certainly proves I am a person of strength. Rather than wilt in the aftermath or harden my emotions, I became stronger-- a methodology I continue to apply to all aspects of my life. When faced with a challenge, I am determined to overcome it. I thrive on goal-setting, be it through academics, running, or piano and never shy away from an opportunity to push myself to the next level. I have run cross country throughout all of high school and I have always wanted to be one of the top seven runners on the team who score in the meets. Entering my senior year I was determined to achieve this top position for my final season. Over the summer I ran everyday but Sunday-- a regiment I maintained even while I was travelling. When the first meet finally arrived in early September, I finished seventh. While I was ecstatic, I know achieving this place on the team will be insignificant in just a few months. However, the various ways my determination manifests within my life will certainly remain important. The incident I underwent at age seven marks a vital transition period in my life. Through my recovery, I went from a child who was naive and carefree, to an individual who is brave, gritty, and independent. I shifted my focus to academic related areas, particularly reading and also recognized my inner strength to achieve what I set out to do. While this adversity was undoubtedly the hardest event I have ever undergone, the traits it evoked within me remain an important part of my identity.
This is actually how it felt when I would stay up until 12 am on school nights reading Captain Underpants or making it impossible to sleep by reading multiple volumes of Goosebumps. I used to completely pass my time reading little simple books like these and in return they would fill my mind with vast opportunities to allow my imagination to flourish and apply it in class. When I first picked up the Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling it was comparable to when the first people proved that the world wasn’t flat, that’s how amazing it felt to be able to fully understand and talk about the books with my
People’s lives are changed every day by their actions and experiences. This past summer, I participated in a community service project, an experience that opened my eyes in many ways. I was a volunteer at the County Memorial Hospital. In my time as a volunteer at the hospital, I was able to meet patients and staff members from all over the world and learn about their life experiences. Listening to all of their stories has made me truly appreciate everything which I have.
It was the summer of 2013 when I was living with my grandparents and they told me about volunteering at the church. I didn’t know what they were talking about, so I took the initiative to go find out for myself that following Sunday. I was in the balcony on Sunday, when I heard the announcements saying we can volunteer for their hope food pantry. I was excited because it was going to be a chance where I can help other and get community service hours. Volunteering I began to think positive thoughts and telling myself “ I am doing a good deed”.
The journey from childhood to adulthood is filled with many challenges with the desired outcome being a successful entry into adulthood. Almost everyone can relate to learning about the significance of family, how to win the respect of peers, how to value humility, the forces of good and evil, and right and wrong, and when it’s time to rebel or follow the rules. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling, is an adventure story set in Surrey, England. It’s about the transformation of a timid, weak young boy with a secret gift, into an infamous hero. Harry Potter, escapes a life of abuse to begin a new life filled with adventure and friends who respect him. The recurring theme throughout the book is that we are neither inherently good or bad, rather it’s our choices or decisions that determine who we become and our place in the world.
It’s amazing how one book can change you, give you a new perspective, and connect with you in so many ways. Your book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, did that for me.
One of the most read series in all literature is Harry Potter. The seven-book succession has sold over 400 million copies and has been translated into over sixty languages. What is it that makes this series so wildly famous? What is it about the boy who lived that makes frenzied readers flock to their local bookstore at midnight on the day of the release to buy the latest installment? How is a story set in a world that doesn’t exist about wizards, witches, magic, and mystical creatures so popular? The series has been able to earn its spot on the New York Times Bestseller list and has granted author J.K. Rowling multiple awards because it is relatable. It is not the setting or the events in the plot of the story that we relate to. We relate to what Harry, his friends, mentors, teachers, caretakers, and even enemies feel. Harry is in a lot of ways exactly like us. He represents some of the good characteristics that all of us have as well as the bad. The series as a whole, is about one thing that is stressed over and over again in the novels, love. The Harry Potter series is one of the most read sequences of novels because the central theme is love and self-sacrifice, and readers are looking for a novel that shows them just that.
goal. If I reached or exceeded the goal, I was given awards like limo rides, pizza party, and early release for field day at the end of the school year. However, I did not just read whatever I picked up. If a book did not seem interesting in the first three chapters, I would give up on it and return it to the library for something different. No matter what I read, it was for my own personal enjoyment first and foremost. The Series of Unfortunate Events is still by far one of my most favorites series of books. I could not stop reading those books. Anytime I had a break, I was reading during subject changes in class, during lunch, during P.E., in between homework assignments and before and after dinner. Reading those books is what I remember most about third grade. Now, whenever I find a good series of books, like The Hunger Games, I hold on to them tight. High school was the same until my teachers started assigning summer readings and extensive assignments to go along with the readings as well as a test during the first week of school on all the readings. The only book I think I may have out right hated was the Scarlet Letter. I thought that the idea of the story was good, but the 19th century language threw me for a loop. I ended up spark noting the chapters every week. This particular incident did affect me, but not significantly, because I still enjoy reading as a leisure activity over anything physical or any activity outdoors.
Before reading Harry Potter, I very rarely read for pleasure. I found reading boring, almost old fashioned. My frame of mind more readily paralleled Danny Divito in the movie Matlida, who says that “[t]here's nothing you can get from a book that you can't get from a television faster.” While my view of reading as a child could be summed up in that quote, everything changed when I was introduced to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I can remember to this day when my Dad began reading Harry Potter to me, and how I did not understand just how much this book would change me. Harry Potter and his world of wizardry became my own personal Shangri-La, my escape, my own world. Anytime I wanted, I could ascend to a world of fantasy and explore the depths of my own imagination in a way that I had never been capable of doing before. I became obsessed with the book, reading it before, during, and after sc...
The moment I flipped to a page, the sights and sounds of the chapter overwhelmed me. I gazed in awe from the stands as athletes soared through the air on broomsticks, and I dared not turn my eyes away from the regal hippogriff strutting about its corral. The scent of musty, leather-bound books in the library drifted into my nose, and I took gulps of the fresh Scottish air, smiling when I caught a whiff of the evening’s supper being prepared in the kitchens. If I concentrated, I could identify every flavor of Bertie Bott’s jellybeans, while the foul taste of polyjuice potion never failed to make me crinkle my nose in disgust. As I meandered down the winding street of Diagon Alley, I listened to the hustle and bustle of people purchasing cloaks and meeting for butterbeer; in the eerie Forbidden Forest, I strained my ears to notice any sign of a dangerous creature, from the dark lord himself to centaurs and friendly giants named Grawp. I grasped the golden snitch to win the game for my house, and I stroked my bunkmate’s cat whilst trying hopelessly to transfigure it into a goblet. I laughed with the red-haired Gryffindor king, practiced spells with the brightest witch of her age, and battled beside the boy who lived. Outside of the story, I was an ordinary human, or as I came to call it, a muggle. However, once I stepped inside the vibrant, fantastical world created by J.K. Rowling, I became a wizard. The best book I read as a child may not be singular- rather, it is a series of seven- but the tale it weaves is one of a kind. It captivated me from start to finish as I plowed through the novels in just one year. It inspired me to continue reading, and it paved the way for my love of the written word. It became my one true love, encomp...
Reading has become a fundamental tool in teaching children as well as adults. It’s one of the first things we learn in school, it’s something that we are required to do throughout our lives for work. We read to stay informed, we read to continue learning, thus growing as human beings. We are constantly bombarded with words that our brains instantly process, and yet few things are equivalent to the lessons we learn in books. Books teach us how to be human. They teach us to interact with each other, how to converse and discuss ideas. By reading, we face moral issues, we get to express feelings often ignored in “real life”. We feel compassion for the characters, we feel injustice in certain situations, and we feel love, hate, grief, and an endless multitude of facets in human
Moments in life define who we are as individuals. As adults, we are able to think back and remember times and events that impacted our life. Through the rollercoaster of life, moments surround us, and reading becomes a big part of those moments. When you combine moments and reading, each individual reading experience brings a flood of different emotions. Through books I have escaped into the magical world of Hogwarts, dealt with the struggles of Mia Thermopolis, and been transported through a magical wardrobe. When I think about reading I immediately think about books and the different places they have taken me and the adventures I have been on through reading. Moments in the book have allowed me to redefine and change my perspective on
...he novels of today, they still have a profound impact on the way young adult literature has evolved and how today’s literature has been shaped. The once taboo topics of the past, such as sex and drugs, are now available to teens to read about and to question as they attempt to discover their true identities. Questions such as “Who am I?” and “What is my place in the world?” often resonate through young and new adult novels and “give students the opportunity to explore new ideas and philosophies” (Avoli-Miller). These novels provide learning moments for young adults as they relate to characters and situations. The challenges of love, rejection, bullying, family, coming of age, and other pivotal teenage moments displayed in modern literature give a voice to today’s youth instead of asking them to suffer in silence like many protagonists of the past’s problem novels.
It was a quite silent afternoon when I first read this book. At that moment,I was sitting in the corner alone with my back against the wall. I found an amazing world under the pale sunshine. For me at that time, entering Hogwarts was the coolest thing in the world. The glance once out of the train’s window accomplished the character Harry under the pen of J.K.Rowling. This slim and disheveled little boy accompanies me through my childhood.
For the first time in my life, I discover a kindred spirit. I feel empathy for Harry as he makes his way uncertainly through a strange magical world where he has always belonged, and rather think this is how it will feel when I finally leave home myself. Tears, muffled laughter, and smiles of pure joy accompany my secret readings. Each week as I return the book to its place, I think to myself I have never read a book I had loved so much. My sister loses interest in the middle, but agrees to keep running the diversions. Library day cannot come fast enough.
Reading wasn’t just something I didn’t do anymore, but something that I learned to resent. The passages continued to become more and more complex while my reading level became stagnant. However, when seventh grade came around, I had an English teacher who was incredibly passionate about reading. Despite this, she understood most of my class did not feel the same way. She would go on to find books that would spark our interest. These selections would include The Hunger Games, Riding the Flume, and Old Yeller. My class, to my fortune, would choose The Hunger Games as our book for daily class readings. Our class would then go on to read snippets of the book on a daily basis in hopes that it would inspire us to want to read on our own. For me, it was a success. The snippets weren’t enough for me. I started to read it on my own during free time in class. I then started reading it in all of my classes, and eventually during any free time I had at home. The book turned into the entire series. Page by page, I became a reader again. I would pick up any book that my teacher would suggest to