Discovering through Literacy
Literacy has continued to expand my worldview, while allowing me to both express myself and understand my introverted brother more. I found literacy to be the key to an enriched life, full of learning new perspectives that previously I was unaware of. I feel as if reading and writing marked a turning point in my life as I developed the skills to understand myself and others in greater depths. From listening to stories from my parents, to being inspired to express my thoughts through a journal, and my brother being greatly involved with reading, people have continued to encourage my development in reading and writing.
When I was younger, my mom read the book The Windigos Return to my brother and I. This book had …show more content…
They had a daughter and she had to get married to whoever passed the impossible task they designed for the men. We would make these old folk tales into our own by changing the plot. We would add different characters, like a Pokémon to the story, and continue to develop it how we wanted from there. The tale would turn into another episode that my brother and I had watched that night. As we continue to bounce our obscure ideas off each other, I could feel my dad’s deep laugh as he heard our thoughts. He encouraged our creativity and allowed my mind to create different possibilities without judgment or rejection. I did not have a filter and I allowed myself to take the story wherever I wanted it to …show more content…
I always entered the competition where we had to write an essay on the topic that the college professors had chosen for the kids to write about. Thankfully, I got in every year I submitted a piece. I went to West Junior High School in Shakopee, Minnesota, and at the time, I felt I was not being pushed enough as a writer. I wanted to see how much I could enjoy the wonders of writing, without being forced to write some random essay in school, so I made myself take advantage of the opportunity. I remember being a seventh-grader, in my third year of going to the writer’s conference, taking my all-time favorite class. It was a creative writing class and, purple composition notebook and matching colored pencil in hand, I was ready for it. The professor at Bethel University made us do a simple writing exercise that allowed me to take a simple idea and turn it into a story. First, she gave us two minutes to write as many topic sentences for a possible story idea. After choosing the topic sentence, we were give ten minutes to just, write. Words gushing out of me, I seamlessly filled three pages of what probably was based off of a drama-filled episode from the T.V show I was watching at the time, yet it was so much more. I found my voice as a writer as I intertwined my ideas with each stroke of my