Patel 1

Jay Patel
Ms. Marcum
UWRT-1103
23 September 2015
Literacy Memoir
Lets just get right into it. Writing is not one of my strengths. Its as
simple as that. Never did I really enjoy writing and being expected to express
myself in what I wrote. I cant say the exact same for reading. Reading books
was always a hobby for me, until I got older and had to read real books.
Literature in my life has had ups and downs in terms of how I perceived it,
but in the end I think it got me to where I am today.
As a child, the only proper literacy exposure I was getting was at
school. Both my parents were from India and though they knew how to
speak, read and write in English, it was the kind of English that would require
the grammar-police. Even when it came to speaking, the household spoke
in Gujarati, my native language. In a way you can say English is my 2nd
language, even though I am now much more fluent in it than I am in Gujarati.
The few hours of the day I spent at school were my only exposure to the way
English was to be spoken as in America. My parents would always have me
practice English in all three areas as they realized in life, communicating
properly was very important. I myself felt motivated to do so to simply make
them proud of me.

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One of the earliest pieces of writing I remember doing was a simple
ghost story in 5th grade. I wasn't sure of what I was supposed to write aboutkeep in my mind, writing is not one of my great skills. I had read many ghost
stories before and I knew how to write them, but I just didnt know how to
come up with my own. And once I had an idea, it was tough for me to put
that down on paper. One thing I can say is that I can think and speak many
ideas, but putting them in words is a struggle for me. From what I recall, I
ended up writing a story using a very basic ghost story template. A couple
spends the night in a hotel, the room is haunted, and they hear things and
you know the rest. Though I dont remember what I earned on that
assignment, I overall felt pretty satisfied with what I had created.
Most of my elementary years were full of many unexciting book reports
and summaries. One thing we had to do in almost every grade level was
"Literature Circles. I don't know what it was about me that got me into the
Level 3 Circle, which is where the "advanced books" were. Advanced books
was just a better and nicer way of saying "more pages", and "harder to
understand". Even though these books were fiction (a genre I enjoyed at the
time) they used a lot of vocabulary that I had never been exposed to. The
English I had grown up speaking was slightly different than what I had to be
reading. My circle was full of a bunch of smart girls (stereotype much) that
knew how to analyze and answer the application questions, while I just sat
there still confused about what I had just read. Though I found it to be a
struggle, over time I was able to grasp how it all worked and started

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improving greatly. This improvement even helped me get into the AG
Program in 5th grade. Being in that program helped me expand my
knowledge of reading and writing to different areas.
Most of my middle school is a blur, mostly because I never enjoyed
middle school. What I do remember is one assignment I had to complete in
eighth grade. It was probably the biggest projects I had ever done at the
time. It was my Language Arts class and we were discussing the Holocaust.
There was one book we had to base our project off of, but it was too long ago
for me to remember much about the book. The book was written with a
certain style, a Polish dialect, which made reading the book that much harder
and ultimately made me lose interest really fast. The project required two
essays, a poster, a poem and a 3D model. Im pretty sure I spent my last few
days of middle school focused on that project, wishing that I had more days
to complete it. I hated the project to a very high degree. I didnt see the
point of having to do so much work over a book that I personally had no
interest in. This was the time I began to think that all high school books
would be that tough and boring and that slowly made me start to lose
interest in reading overall.
When high school came it was just constant literature in English
classes. In 9th grade we had to read Lord of the Flies. This officially began my
hatred for literature. Personally, I thought that book was crap, and I couldnt
understand what was going on. It was a very bad story line and that was just
hard to follow. The characters werent set up properly, and the plot was

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jumping around and overall it was just a very weird book. Yet somehow it was
considered a very prized piece of literature. Obviously I ended up failing the
final test on it. After reading that book I just didnt enjoy reading fiction
anymore. It made me actually realize how these fiction books werent
actually teaching me anything and didnt correspond with the real world.
Ever since my freshmen year I began to read (and write a bit) of non-fiction.
Articles of writing that I found to be more about being informative,
argumentative and persuasive, rather that entertaining (which LotF failed
at.greatly.)
10th grade was all about literature from other countries. One of the
major items we read was Night. That book was the exact opposite of LotF.
Night was a great book with lots of detail and imagery. Only bad part was
againthe giant project involved with it. All the research required to write
the Research Paper on it was just too much to handle, especially in tenth
grade. But overall I really enjoyed the literature. The book was non-fiction. It
was there to be informative and was direct and straight to the point which I
learned was something I favored in a work. Wiesels work was probably one
of my favorites that I had to work with in high school
One course that I had taken in 10th grade was Creative Writing. As
someone who did not enjoy writing much, the course didnt sound too
appealing. However I didnt have much of a choice as my parents made me
take it. At the time I was unhappy about it, but little did I know that this
course would be very beneficial to me. I had the course with the same

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teacher I took English I with, so my expectations for the class were not that
high. But as the semester went on, it made me realize that when it came to
writing, I could write about anything. The same way we read and speak
about anything that interests, I could do the same with writing. I had been
conditioned to only write only when assigned to and make it about whatever
the given topic was. Creative Writing pretty much taught me to be creative
about with literature and make it my own. Throughout my time in that course
I learned that letting me be a free bird allowed me to show off my best work.
My final portfolio included pieces such as a couple poems, an autobiography,
interview, short story, and a free write. Id have to say that the free write was
probably one of the very few pieces that to this day Im still proud of. It
allowed me to take my passion and combine it with literature. My free-write
piece was simply a review of a phone. Clearly my passion was technology,
mobile tech, etc. and many writings on that topic are generally article.
Informative articles that is. Writing in that manner where I could inform
others about something I cared about allowed me to really dig deep in my
writing and create something that I never thought I could make.
When 11th grade came, I probably ended up writing anther one of the
papers I am very proud of. Our assignment was to write an argumentative
essay about a conflictive topic. My topic was about Vegetarianism and the
advantages of it. This paper required over a month of research as well as a
lot of time and effort to create a convincing argument. This assignment also
connected with me as it allowed me to put my views in the forward of this

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paper. I did not have to be confined in the boundaries of a prompt, or a
certain stance. It was MY topic and MY position that I wanted to take. The
topic also being something that is personal to me allowed me to put a great
deal of thought and detail into my paper. I realized that an argumentative
paper is the same as an informative essay. Youre simply informing the
reader about your stance.
The literature I had to work with in the 12th grade wasnt that bad. We
started off with 1984, which was a very interesting book. Though it was
fiction, I didnt find it too bad to understand and work with. I found the entire
concept of it to be quite interesting. The second half of the semester was not
as easy. Shakespeare. Hamlet was by far one of the hardest pieces of
literature I have ever read in my life. The style of English, diction, and the
way Shakespeare wrote his plays made it difficult to understand. However it
wasnt that I disliked his work, because when I finally did understand what he
was saying I found it to be impressive. Seeing that he could shape his words
and sentences into a certain way while still maintaining the meaning.
Overall my perception of literature has changed over time. Always will I
still favor literature through speaking, but writing and reading is always an
option too. For me it just depends on how well the topic connects to me. Can
I make it personal, or will I actually get anything out of it. To me, literature is
what you make of it. I found over the years what it was that captivated me
and made me what to indulge myself into it. My high school years was when
it really hit me of what it was that I enjoyed working with, and what I am

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most comfortable with today. These days I still do practice writing essays but
in a different manner. I combine it with my passion for mobile tech. Every
time a new device is unveiled, I write my own personal review of it, just to
allow me to gain the experience of being a tech journalist. All while doing
that Im still able to connect it with something I love.