Literacy Narrative

The literacy narrative is some form of literary work narrating its creators literary journey
in becoming knowledgeable or literate in some subject. The medium and subject may vary, but
they all follow the same general path of starting at the earliest point in that portion of the
persons history, and retelling the events as the person remembers them, ending at the point
where that person considered themselves to be literate in their chosen subject, or at the time of
the narratives creation.
For my literary narrative, I chose to recount my introduction and journey through the
complex world of EVE Online, and how I became literate in the games complicated language.
I tried to take the ideas and concepts of the game, which are often senseless without context, and
make them understandable to the common person by essentially teaching them, the same way I
was taught. While the purpose of the assignment was to show how I became literate in the
context of EVE, this essay actually managed to strengthen this understanding. By looking at the
game and the learning process I undertook by playing, it helped me to recognize this language
and EVEs ideals as their own form of culture. While small in scope, it is a fully formed culture
with economic, political, and social inputs and effects.
This was one of my first writings done in UWRT 1101, but I believe its one of my more
complete ones as it was done on a familiar subject, and was given without much restriction. I
was free to write the narrative in any way I chose, and, being based on my own personal
experiences, was something I already had all the knowledge needed to write. My original draft
had a few gaping flaws, most notably that it tended to run off track rather quickly. One of the
cons of using a familiar subject of your choosing is deciding which parts to include, and which
parts to leave out. Including everything would result in a long, drawn out essay that misses the
point. With my second draft, I removed some small unnecessary portions and pulled others back
in towards the main point. In the end, it was a fairly decent essay, but it still could be made more
concise, and include more detailed points that describe the changes that occurred during my
learning of the games culture.
Overall, this piece represents one of the first pieces written that reflects the improvements
learned in UWRT 1101. It shows some of the improvements made from my earliest work shown,
but lacks still further improvements shown in my later works. It shares a common context with
several of my other essays, and as such, shares many of their strengths and weaknesses, but
being the earliest, the others also have experience assisting their quality.