Personal Journey: My Struggle and Triumph with Literacy

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Literacy is a concept that can have a different definition among each every person across the world. My literary journey began when I entered this world just as the next person. Many years ago, as my dad worked in his office I enjoyed trying to mimic the flow of his hand. While my penmanship was poor, I quickly began to process how to write; reading however was another story. I can remember as a toddler my mother would read the short story, Good Night Moon. As she read, I would attempt to follow her eyes. I so greatly desired to be able to read as my family was able to. This desire fueled my efforts, and so my literacy grew. My life was instant thrown into the mix with words and phases that I could hardly comprehend, and much less write. With …show more content…

As I entered into the next phase of my life with the coming of both middle and high school, I quickly began to realize that I was ahead of the majority of my peers. Literacy is more easily developed at a young age. A sense of accomplishment and maturity came over me as I became more literate. Not only was I learning how to read and write, but I was also becoming an adult. Of course, at this young age, I struggled with more advanced novels. I quickly learned that I excelled at reading science fiction, survival stories in particular. Of course, if I read books that i enjoyed, I became more literate. Context was critical. Words came up tat i did not know the meaning; however, if I knew the situation, I could understand the word by adding it to that …show more content…

Reading and writing was so important in allowing me to be where I am today. You simply cant advance in this world if you cant read or write. I now have a new idea of what it means to be literate. Most people believe that the context of literacy is only based on one’s knowledge of reading and writing. I came to college with this same thinking. Although, I know know that literacy encompasses any complete knowledge in your specific area of interest. I came to college with the intentions of becoming more literate. I didn't know it at the time, but I wanted to become literate in the study of biology, and become a doctor in the long run. Becoming literate in biology has more to it than just being able to read and write the information out of the textbook. In order to become literate in biology, I will have to spend long hours studying the information and be able to apply it to a certain situation. A doctor is not literate in medicine by simply knowing the information in his expertise. I believe that there is more to it than that. Literacy can have a verbal sense. If a doctor walks up to his patient and knows exactly what pathogen has invaded her body and the steps she needs to take to take care of it but cant relay the message in common terms, that doctor is not literate. In the medical field, I believe in order to be literate, one must be able to accomplish the following: read and write the material, understand it, and be able to relay the message to

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