My Literacy Autobiography - Literacy and Luck

StartFragment

I’m lost in a swarm of other children just like me. Some are crying, wanting their mothers to come back for them. Some are excited to finally start this thing called “school.” Some are silently wandering, hoping that someone will talk to them and be their friend. Then there’s me, the one talking to everyone who passes me, trying to find someone to cling to as a friend. Now I suppose I looked like a fool, I guess I knew it then too based on the confused expressions of the other kids. I enter my classroom and put my backpack on a hook that is hung right below a large ladybug sticker with my name on it. I’m ready to start the day. I sit down at a table with a girl I don’t know and we don’t talk much. The teacher tells us to take out our notebooks and a pencil (I picked out my favorite, I believe it was pink) and just write a simple journal entry about something we like. Everyone’s faces light up as they start writing, but not me. My heart plummets. My great day full of excitement then turns into an internal feeling of guilt and confusion. I write my name at the top of the page, and I stop. The teacher eventually walks over to me, she is clearly confused that my page is blank. She asks me why I haven’t written anything, and I tell her. I only know how to write my name. This is the very first memory I have from reading or writing anything. A terrifying first day of kindergarten. When I went home and told my parents what had happened, my step father sat me down at our dining room table, and taught me to write my first word, “cat.” In just a couple years, by the time I’m in second grade, I’m at the top of my class and I’m getting one hundred percent on every single spelling test, every Friday. I went from being terrified of writing to loving every second of it, and this is far from the only memorable part of my long journey in literacy.

Once I was introduced into the private school system, things did become harder for me due to the more severe and advanced grading curriculum. However, this did help to mature my reading and writing abilities. While I was in third grade, I was still only reading books like The Very Hungry Caterpillar and I was terrified of chapter books. Now that I’m a junior in high school, some of my favorite books include One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and A Clockwork Orange. As far as writing goes, in third grade I was really only good at writing fictional stories and even then, my grammar wasn’t too good. Just last year, I wrote a fourteen page paper about Narcissism and its connection to “deadbeat parents.” I even focused three paragraphs on the psychology of Narcissism and how a Narcissistic brain differs from a normal one. I don’t give myself a lot of credit, but I’ll be first to admit I’ve come a long way. Some of this I did totally on my own, but there are people that helped me along the way. Especially in middle school.

Middle school wasn’t an easy time for me. I was very awkward and trying to figure out how to act, what to do, et cetera. During that time, I really enjoyed writing poetry. In my seventh grade year, a teacher named Maria Mahoney-Anderson came to St. Pius, my elementary and middle school. She was like an angel to me. I loved going into her class, and it was quite obvious she cared about me too. I excelled with every assignment she gave, and she never let me forget that I was different, but beautiful. One assignment she assigned was a poetry anthology. I had to create a miniature book, and not only write nine different poems in nine different ways, but illustrate them as well. I was actually doing better than I had been doing mentally around this time, even though unfortunately, I didn’t truly start getting better until mid-way through my freshman year. All of my poems were very depressing. I talked about just about every mental disorder in the books, including Depression and Anorexia. These things weren’t applying to me, but I knew a lot about them. I even wrote a couple poems centered around suicide or souls of those who had committed suicide, which I’ll admit, was pretty messed up for a seventh grader. Even though they were sad poems, I knew I wrote great ones. I turned in the anthology and she actually called me in to talk to me about what I had written. I distinctly remember her saying, “Madyson. These are very dark, but they are so beautifully written.” I assured her that I was okay through the course of our conversation, and I also told her that sadness is an emotion that’s much easier to connect to than happiness. Another teacher once told me to think about how many words I could think of as synonyms for “sad” versus how many I could think of for “happy.” Mrs. Anderson later asked me to write a poem for our yearbook once I was in eighth grade and about to graduate. I still remember, and still have, the card that she gave me on the last day of school. Inside of it she wrote, “Madyson… you are a very special girl, you are a leader, not a follower, and I will always admire you for that. Have a great summer, and never stop being you.”

I’m a high schooler now, with only two years left before I’m all on my own. To say the least, that terrifies me. I may only be a junior, but I’ve already been working on three horror short stories and one autobiography about my life with a narcissist. I’m still getting at least ninety percents in all of my english classes, and I’m still absolutely loving writing. Literacy has helped me find a job that I truly enjoy this past year. If not for learning how to properly read and write, my speaking ability wouldn’t be as developed and my interviewing skills would probably be less than sub par. It’s helped me to write songs, compose letters, and speak my mind in an educated way. It’s helped me to create my own worlds in the form of short stories, and helped me tell my own already existing story. I’ve had the privilege of connecting with characters, and also experienced being intrigued by a character. A specific example would be Alex, the main character of A Clockwork Orange. He is responsible for one of the first recollections I had that made me realize I’m very interested in Psychology. I want to know why people do the things that Alex does, and why certain mental treatments don’t work. I’m now taking Advanced Placement Psychology, and am quite serious about going into that field of study once in college. If I couldn’t read, I may have never noticed I had an attraction to such a complex field. Some kids say english classes and reading are boring or pointless. I personally love both, and I owe almost everything to my developed skills of literacy. My journey has been a long and winding one, a roller coaster, if you will; But truthfully, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I’d like to end with a quote from one of my favorite books.

EndFragment