Narrative Essay on Literacy

Narrative Essay on Literacy 

Reading and writing once had a special place in my heart. However, as I grew up, my perception of the two changed and I no longer enjoy them as I once had. Though I do feel reading and writing are the fundamental building blocks of a child’s life I just don’t enjoy them anymore.

When I was younger, my parents would always encourage me to read and work on my handwriting. My mother specifically would help me with my spelling as well as my handwriting. She used to always tell me that my handwriting “looked like doctor’s handwriting” because no one could read it or so she would say. I thought my handwriting looked fine, but then again it was my handwriting so what else was I supposed to think. To avoid future criticism, I worked on my handwriting, and it improved to my liking, but my parents would say it’s alright. Despite such critiques, it did not stray me away from writing. I remember creating these little stories about practically anything because it made me happy. I remember writing one story about the time I went to the Zoo, and it had so much life to it that my teacher gave me a 100 and told me I did a good job, so it felt amazing. Of course, my parents would read them as well and told me that I was a great writer, and it boosted my confidence significantly. Thinking back on it now, I wonder if I was a good writer, or they just said it because they were my parents. In addition to writing, I also thoroughly enjoyed reading. I remember learning to read in school when we had buddy reading. Some of the older kids would come to our classes and read to us and help us learn words we didn’t know. After that, I would read anything day or night because I loved reading so much. It got to a point that I read so much that my parents would tell me to take a break because I was reading so frequently.

However, as time has gone on and I have gotten older, I lost the passion I once had for reading and writing. While I once enjoyed both reading and writing because I found them fun, I now think differently. I believe my distaste for the two began when they stopped being fun. My mom started making me write essays for which I felt had no purpose at all, but she said it was to work on my writing skills to prepare me for high school and college. However, I was just confused because she made me write the essays so she could read them, but she didn’t give me any feedback, so I just thought it was pointless and boring. And at the same time, my school started giving reading and writing based lectures that also made me lose interest. We started focusing on higher vocabulary, grammar rules, point of view, etc. Honestly, I could never really remember the rules no matter how many times I practiced them because they were boring. I also never really understood why there was such a heavy emphasis on them. I am all for making writing clear, but I felt that with so many rules it made writing harder to read unless you had a deep understanding of it, or you were a professor. And I feel the same thing applies to reading. It became more about analyzing a text and deciphering what the writer was trying to say rather than just reading for enjoyment. And I could never analyze what they were saying because it seemed like a foreign language to me, and I always just analyzed the surface of things. But what threw a curveball at me was poems. I hate poems with a passion. I feel like everyone understands them but me and my test scores would decline resulting in another reason for my liking of writing and reading to dissipate. The vocabulary and figurative language that appeared throughout poems confused me because what the author meant was not straightforward and I was never one to be able to read between the lines.

With that being said, I don’t necessarily despise reading and writing completely. While I do not prefer to write, I still read occasionally for pleasure. Generally, I only read mystery and suspense novels because that is what piques my interest, but I still read. My favorite book is Dead Girls Don’t Lie by Jennifer Shaw Wolf, which I have read multiple times because it was so intriguing even though I don’t like to read a book more than once. Although I don’t enjoy reading and writing as much as I used to, I still believe they are necessities though they now lack my interest.