Literacy: My Attitudes Of Reading And Writing

Literacy
If one were to walk into any classroom, whether it be a lowly kindergarten class, or a lecture hall at Stanford, one may ask the instructor “What is the most important trait a student must have to succeed in his or her academic career?”, and the answer will most always be, literacy. However, that is one trait, which I have personally always struggled with. When asked to write a literacy narrative about the origins of my current attitudes of reading and writing, I could only think back to my sophomore year, because of one my first narrative essays.
Since the age of eleven, I had hated reading and writing. It lacked excitement, so at the beginning of my sophomore year of high school, I did not expect my attitude to change. It was around

noon when I walked into Mrs. Walker’s freezing room. And at this point it was probably the 3rd week of school. After a few moments of conversing with some classmates about whatever was on our minds, Mrs. Walker closed the door and we all took our seat at our desks. She continued to hand out a piece of paper. Half asleep I grabbed the paper, and I was instantly struck by a shroud of fear - it was a writing assignment. It was not minute later that I was considering how I could finagle my way through this essay. While I was consciously thinking about how my grade will drop two letters, it was to my relief when Mrs. Walker explained that the narrative can be about whatever we wanted.
When I got to work on the assignment, I struggled finding what I could write about. We could pick from whatever we wanted, so I chose what seemed like I could write the most about. Throughout middle school, my parents went through a rough divorce that I was caught in the middle of. Most of the memories of that period were suppressed, and so subsequently there was a great deal to write about. I somehow took joy in writing about this bad part in my life, but I think that was due to the fact that I was expressing my emotions through text. I wrote probably two pages of information, which at the time was the most I had ever written.
When I had turned in my paper, I was actually confident that I did well. When I received my paper I was in shock to see I had gotten a 92% when I was hoping for a low “B”. I had never done that well on a writing assignment, and I had never cared about writing until that moment. I would call that one assignment, a major shift in my attitude towards reading and writing.
Literacy is such an important trait to obtain at a young age, and furthermore is a commodity that one must strive to take great joy in, and not disregard at the age of eleven. That one small paper that I had just decided to write lead me to actually find myself interested in literacy. My experiences in English classes were much more enjoyable. I was much more attentive, and remarkably achieved my way to the Advanced Placement level my senior year. Without having that instructor and that one assignment, my whole attitude on literacy would not have changed, and I probably would not be writing this narrative essay.
NA, 2015