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Andrew Russo
Professor Malcolm Campbell
UWRITE 1103
September 16th, 2015
Literacy Narrative
As a student, I have never been interested in reading or writing. The only reason I ever
read or wrote was because I would be receiving a grade for the assignment that would overall
affect my success in the class. I never hated reading or writing I just could never understand how
some people would willingly do it in their free time. I feel like my lack of interest in reading and
writing resulted from the fact that I was never truly inspired, I was just forced into completing
assignments and simply going through the motions. However, in my sophomore English class I
wrote an essay that gave me a new insight to the importance of reading and writing and how
someone could possibly enjoy doing it.
Sophomore year I really enjoyed my English class. The main reason that I enjoyed going
to the class so much was because the teacher, Mrs. Putnam, was very encouraging and showed
me that I had more potential than I had grown up thinking. Up until that point, I never had a
teacher express to me that I excelled in reading and writing and had the ability to comprehend
information at the college level. The fact that I enjoyed going to class helped me stay enriched in
the material that we were learning and made me take pride in the work that I was completing.
Halfway through the semester Mrs. Putnam assigned the class a research paper. Right away a
sense of urgency and panic struck the class because along with the rubric for the assignment we
received a list of dates when our sections of research should be completed. As I skimmed

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through the names on the list that was presented to us I could feel my anxiety start to fade when
the name Phil Jackson jumped off the page into my sight.
Phil Jackson is a world renowned basketball coach who has won a total of thirteen NBA
championships including six coaching the Chicago Bulls during the Michael Jordan era, five
coaching the Los Angeles Lakers, and two while playing with the New York Knicks. With me
being originally from New York, and growing up a Knicks fan I immediately recognized his
name. From this moment on, I gained an interest in the assignment because I had always wanted
to learn more about Phil Jacksons history and this presented me with a good opportunity to do
so. This was the first time that I had ever been excited about writing a research paper. I thought
to myself that if I were actually interested in the topics that I had to research that I would retain
more of the information that I would have learned.
For the research paper, the class was required to pick out multiple references from which
we had to get our information, one of which had to be a book. The hardest part of the assignment
for me was finding the correct resources that contained the information that was required to write
the six page essay. Using the internet, I easily found multiple websites that included facts and
general information about Phil Jackson. Being the sports fanatic that I am, as soon as I began my
research I got caught up in learning new things and statistics about my topic that I failed to find a
book that included information about him until the last minute when I rushed to the school
library and requested help from one of the staff to assist me in finding a book that fit the
requirements of the rubric sheet. Once I found the book, I frantically skimmed through it looking
for information that I could include in my essay, but in the midst of my skimming I found some
information that really caught my interest and I did not want to put the book down. I woke up the

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next morning peeling my face off my desk and wiping the drool from my face ready to begin
writing my paper.
When I started on my outline, I reviewed my information that I recorded down in my
notes and the only problem that I ran into was that I had too much information that I wanted to
include in my paper. Again, I had taken two steps forward and one step back so I had to spend
time sorting through the information that I had gathered and pick out the items that I thought
were the most important. After that, I completed my outline and then began to type out my first
draft of the assignment. Recognizing that I was writing a biography I made the decision to sort
out the information chronologically to help the reader easily understand the stages in Phil
Jacksons life. Once I completed my first draft it was required that all students turn in their work
to Mrs. Putnam. Realizing that I was the first one to compete their rough draft I walked up to her
with pride and handed her my paper.
Anxiously waiting for Mrs. Putnams feedback, I went back to my computer and
continued reading about Phil Jackson, looking for more information that I could possibly include
in my final draft. A few days later I received my rough draft back, covered in a title wave of red
marks. The biggest problem throughout my paper was my horrendous spelling. For as long as I
can remember spelling has always been a common struggle of mine. I remember spending
countless hours reviewing vocabulary lists with my mother and have her quiz me on the words
when I was done studying. I would watch her grade my mock quizzes with great worry and
cringe at the sight of her marking an X on my paper. So when I saw all of these red marks on my
rough draft, I instantly went to Mrs. Putnam for help. Mrs. Putnam and I sat down and went
through my paper, going over the things I could do to improve my work and after about thirty
minutes I understood why she had graded my work so critically compared to the other students in

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my class. After this, I finally felt ready to get started on my final draft and include the
improvements that Mrs. Putnam had suggested to me.
As I started on my final draft, my eagerness to correct all of the mistakes surprised me as
I realized that correcting them would not only help me learn more about writing but also improve
the quality of my essay. While I read over my paper again, with a new mindset, I could not
believe how many errors I made and the amount of misspelled words that I included. Once I had
finished my essay I read it over one last time, and I realized that it was one of the best written
essays that I had ever produced. To be safe, I had my mother re-read my essay for me and give
her opinion on it. She said that my essay was very well written but still gave me some
corrections and improvements that I could use to make it better. After I made my final
corrections, I printed and stapled my assignment together. When I was stapling my assignment, I
ran into a problem. Due to my perfectionism, I was not satisfied with how the paper looked
stapled together and so I had to re-print it and re-staple it to be satisfied with my work.
The next morning, I turned in my assignment to Mrs. Putnam with complete confidence
and joy in the quality of my work. A few days later, the entire class received their papers back
with our grades on them. Hearing a great amount of sighs come from my fellow classmates I
began to get nervous, assuming that I would be disappointed as well. To my surprise, Mrs.
Putnam walked over to my desk with a big smile across her face and handed me my paper. I
looked down at my perfectly stapled essay with great relief as I read the words Fantastic job!
accompanied by a smiley face and a big green one hundred across the top. I felt so much pride
and I realized that is how I should always feel when writing assignments. While writing, I never
felt forced, I honestly wanted to do my work. Since then, writing and reading has come easier to

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me and I have been able to get more interested in topics that I have been assigned to research
because I found that it was harder to write an essay if the topic was not interesting to me.