Presnell 1

Shade Presnell
Professor Intawiwat
UWRT 1103
14 September 2014
Looking back at all my years of literacy I realize that, the path of literacy you take
can change your own future. The things I have read and learned over the years have
influenced me to strive to achieve the happiness you seek. The novels in my adolescence
granted werent that difficult, but Im grateful for those years that shaped me as an
individual and led me to inquire within myself to keep practicing to become better and to
never settle for complacency in or throughout my life.
The End of My Illiteracy
What is this? All these symbols on a piece of paper, and they all mean something?
Surely thats not what I thought to myself the first time I ever picked up a book. In all
actuality it is more likely is that there were no subconscious thoughts of meaning, or
prose. To me it was probably just pictures on a paper with my mom saying things that my
adolescent mind was too young to comprehend. When one examines their own literacy
history the results are probably all the same, just words going into our sponge-like brains,
soaking up what we can understand and dismissing what we could not. But then again
without this preexistence of literacy our minds wouldnt develop as well as they should.

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Pictures are in essence a form of language. Could you imagine a world without signs that
carry meaning? Its a paradox, the world would not be what it is without the linguistic
behavior of pictures that drive our fundamentally evolving brains.
The first actual book I can remember actually reading was Clifford the Big Red
Dog during reading time in kindergarten. Mrs. Jane's kindergarten classroom was lined
with these buckets filled with paper back copies of books that ranged in difficulty.
Everyday at least once during the day we would all be assigned to pick out a book from
the bins and read them with a partner. As I sit with Kyle Adams and read the books
everyday I grow stronger in my lexical level, moving from level 1 with Clifford to level
20 The Magic School bus. Soon Im even able to read on my own, leaving Kyle in the
dust, but still helping him along the way. My parents start to see my reading interest grow
so they accommodate this new skill by buying me a bookshelf so I can have my own
collection. You can imagine my excitement when one day I come home to a, previously
empty, now filled bookshelf with an array of used books that my cousins had grown out
of. Frog and Toad, the three parts of it at least has been read so many times now that the
paper-back has fallen off completely and it is not being held together by laminated sheets
in a binder. Looking back they were mostly coloring books, but books none the less.
Now feeling as if I was the master of syntax I lost interest in reading for a while,
until the summer I spent with Aunt Laura. Now Aunt Laura was the quintessential bookworm. She was the librarian at the middle school and headed a public library during the
summer. So every morning for that summer my mother would take me and drop me off

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with Laura at the public library. She took it upon herself to help me get my first library
card, which I still possess to this very day. My aunt tells me about this program where I
can read books and tell her about their content and get prizes at the end of the summer for
however many books I read. Music to my ears, books were now a way for me to escape
from the boring library as well as a way for me to get awesome new toys. So I read, every
day from 8-3 only taking breaks to eat and use the bathroom, on second thought just to
eat.
The best part about it was that if I didn't finish what I was reading I could always take it
home and finish that night. This didn't just go on for one summer, from then on out I
wanted to spend my summers with Laura, well at least for the time being.
Soon I was old enough to join the Royal Ambassadors, a group sponsored by the
southern baptist association. This group met at church every Wednesday night to read
through a booklet about the lives of missionaries in other countries. As The meeting
elapsed we would all take turns reading sections from the booklet. Eager to show off my
abilities, I always volunteered first. I was soon disappointed by the fact that I couldn't
read every word listed in the booklet. However, if I was ever stuck on a word the leader,
Tim Kelley would usher me through the phonetic enunciation. This new vocabulary wasn't
something that just comes naturally to someone in 2nd grade, the group consisted of only
boys ranging from elementary students to those in high school. So my reading was slow
but accurate in the since that I soon began picking up the vocabulary like it were second
nature. Years went by and I became the best reader in the group, my savvy skills had

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payed off, now the church took it upon their selves to but me my own Bible. It had my
name in gold on the front cover, which I thought was the bomb, even the words that Jesus
had spoken were painted in the color of his blood. Not only did I receive my first
personal Bible, I was also given the power of the lord in which to read it. Tim told me
Son if you memorize the books of the Bible in order I'll give you the R.A. Pocket knife.
Reading for a reward was something I had already been used to at the library, to his
surprise I was back the next week with the recitation memorized.
As a student in college I feel like I have had a successful literacy history, the
various novels and different plays written by Shakespeare that came in high school were
the glue that holds it all together. Reading has become an outlet for me, a place where I
can go where the rest of the world escapes me and I am left to ponder the on the thoughts
and words set before me. My reading recently has ventured into novels about anti-matter
and dark energy, which is a theory of quantum physics. This new genre of literacy has put
me into a different state of mind and future. It has shown me about things I had only heard
about and now I get to go into the unravel depths and secrets on this emerging science
field. I now see my future as being filled with further education and out of the box
thinking.