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Harrison Underwood
Literacy Memoir
UWRT-1103 (Marcum)
2/2/16

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Literacy: A Continuous Journey

A person isnt just born with certain literacy skills, they develop these skills over
time throughout their lives in various day-to-day situations. Many factors play into how literacy
is acquired over time. Whether they live in a poor area, dont have access to an education, or
simply have no access to reading and writing, the level of literacy a person can obtain all
depends on the different living conditions of each individual. Most of the time, people arent
even aware that they are becoming more literate as they continue on with their lives. In class,
we discussed the importance of literacy sponsors in our lives and how they shaped us into who
we are today. As Brandt writes, The concept of sponsors helps to explain, then, a range of
human relationships and ideological pressures that turn up at the scenes of literacy learning ()
(1) As your progress in your literacy, you will run into problems. Whether it being writing a final
paper for a class, or studying for a confusing Shakespearian final, there will always be sponsors
to help you along the way. Throughout your life, its important to draw attention to the sponsors
that helped you get to where youre today. Within this paper, my goal is to show readers how my
literacy has developed throughout my life, and what factors assisted or constrained me in getting
there.
Growing up, I attended a private Christian school down the street from my house. Since
this was considered to be a college preparatory school, we had countless reading and writing
assignments to complete. Throughout my elementary school days, we were required to read a
book each week and take a reading quiz on the book to ensure that we read. This system was
called accelerated reading and even though it forced kids to read, they had a choice in what they
wanted to read. Giving kids the opportunity to choose what they are interested in allows them to
grow their intellect in a more captivating way. Even though you can choose an easy book to read,

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I chose to try and read at the highest level possible. The higher level I could read at, the better
image I gave off to the rest of my classmates. That being said, in the fifth grade, I was already
reading at a high school level and was determined to keep on. Reading throughout elementary
and middle school felt like a competition and I had every intention to excel past my peers. At a
private school, there was an enormous amount of pressure placed on academic success. With
such a small class size, it becomes everyones business if you arent performing well in school.
The tight knit social environment allowed for everyone to become very familiar with each others
personal business since there were so few students. However, I didnt mind this since I was
enjoying my schoolwork. At the time, I enjoyed to read and realized it was because I was given a
choice as far as what I wanted to read. A problem with a lot of students today, is that they are no
longer given a wide range of options as far as what they want to read. That being said, when
uninteresting, and dry books come their way, they completely shut down and try to find any
possible way around reading. Giving students a variety of choices will give them more of a
desire to achieve instead of making them feel entrapped in whats being asked of them.
I fall into the category of students that become anxious about what the
assignment is requiring me to do, instead of focusing on the process to get there. I put too much
emphasis on the final grade and how it will affect me, thus determining my mindset when
writing. In Shens article The Classroom and the Wider Culture: Identifying as a Key to Learning
English Composition, he writes that, the number one rule in English composition is: Be
Yourself. (2) I find this rule is forgotten all the time and it affects the outcome of the quality of
work that a student will produce. The creativity wont come without putting your brain in the
right mind set to write. This being said, it becomes incredibly difficult for a student to focus on
being themselves in their writing with so much pressure placed on the end result. Treating the

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final grade as the focal point for ones writing strains a students creativity, and affects the quality
of the work that they will produce. I, like a majority of other students, stress over the grade Im
going to make instead of the process and ways in which Im going to get there. I picked up this
habit in high school because of their inability to teach students the process thats used to get the
end result. High Schools are notorious for teaching kids that meeting the due dates is all you
need to do. They spend too much time telling you what to do, and how much it will affect you,
instead of preparing students how to think critically about the school work assigned to them. This
hasnt prepared high school students like me for the work that they will be required to complete
in college. In college, an avid amount of pressure is placed on your ability to critically read and
think, and if you havent learned that skillset yet, its much harder to succeed. Professors expect
their students to come to college with a general idea of critical thinking, but its impossible to do
that if students arent given a foundation to build on because of the incompatible high schools
they attended.
The ability to read and write critically goes a long way in developing a students literacy.
In high school, almost every student is required to read long, dreadful, and scholarly books and
articles throughout their career. These books tend to be ones that you dont want to read but you
have to in order to make a good grade in the class. Whenever I read required books in high
school, I always found myself having a difficult time comprehending what I am reading due to
my inability to focus on whats being said. In other words, my eyes are following the paper but
my brain isnt taking in what Im reading, so I constantly find myself rereading, and attempting
to translate the words into a form that I can understand. After struggling through a long portion
of a reading or book, I tend to give up and turn my focus towards something else. The frustration
that arises from being unable to understand what Im reading, is the main reason that reading is

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such a turn off for me. This frustration hadnt always been a problem, but I started to notice it
during my middle school years.
Middle school was when my education started to ramp up in difficulty, but my motivation
to succeed wouldnt follow that same path. Books starting becoming harder to read, assignments
were harder to understand, and the amount of late work started to rack up. In middle school, I
started this mindset where I believed that my school work didnt matter until I got into high
school. This mindset was supported by the friends I chose to hang out with. Even though I went
to a private Christian school, I still managed to become best friends with the most troublesome
boy in my class, Tristen. Tristen told me that I shouldnt try in school because colleges wouldnt
ever look at my middle school performance. Even though I was in the sixth grade, this
misconception led me in the dark through the rest of my middle school years. I started to put
assignments off, ceased to prepare or study for upcoming tests and started to dig myself into a
hole that I still continue to find myself in. Throughout middle school, I started to develop a
pattern in my life, a pattern that would develop into a bigger problem in high school,
procrastination.
Weve all been in a sticky situation when it comes to completing a last minute
assignment. I can remember countless nights spent struggling through a long term paper with the
due date being the following morning. Throughout high school, I became accustomed, like many
of other students my age, to the fact that procrastination was acceptable. High school was a time
when procrastination was another form of success. Procrastination wasnt a problem until I
transferred schools. Up until the end of ninth grade year, I remained enrolled at the private
school near my house. At St. Davids, the process of completing an assignment was focused on
instead of the final product. Because of the smaller class size, as well as the social norms that

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surrounded them, private schools have a tendency to prepare students more for college then the
typical public school. Private schools stress the importance of starting a foundation and building
on it over time. However, at public school, I learned quickly that teachers were only concerned
with the completion the assignment, instead of the process that was used to get there. To be
brutally honest, the transfer from a private school to public was what started the downfall in my
literacy career.
When I transferred to public school, I was in the mindset that everything was going to be
better after I transferred. Nothing sounded better then a larger class size, the ability to skip class,
and all the other distractions that a public school had to offer. The social norms of a public high
school are polar opposite of those at a private school and I have always had a tendency to do
what my peers around me are doing. At private school, every student all shared the same
motivation to perform well in school. That being said, it was easy to work hard since everyone
else around me was doing it. There was also more pressure placed on doing well since there are
only forty students in your whole entire grade, whereas at public school, theres the same amount
of people in just one of your classes. With over seven hundred kids in my class, I no longer
placed any pressure on myself to perform as well as everyone else since I was being compared to
all the other students in my grade.
Public school marked the period of time in which the quality of my writing started to go
downhill. Even though I was in AP English classes throughout high school, I still hated nothing
more then reading those scholarly articles, or writing those immensely long and confusing
argumentative research papers. Truthfully, I never had to read the entirety of any book that I was
assigned to read at public school. That being said, when test time came around, I would spend a
small portion of time reading chapter summaries for the book and still end up performing just

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well enough to scrape by. Even when writing papers, I found myself constantly writing the bare
minimum requirement and then stopping because it was enough for me. Doing just enough
became a habit in my life that I couldnt break throughout high school until my senior year.
When senior year of high school rolled around, things became a whole lot more serious in
my studies. I realized that I could no longer continue my work ethic in the manner that I had
been if I wanted to go further in my academics by attending college. The fear of not being able to
attend college was enough to motivate me to achieve higher in my studies. I developed a habit of
reading a multitude of different genres of books to try and get a taste of as much as I could. My
desire to read wasnt spurred randomly. Ive always seen my dad with a book in his hand
whenever he has the opportunity to read. He tries to read a book or two a week but it wasnt the
amount of reading he was doing that inspired me. In fact, the knowledge that he was gaining
through reading was the main reason I started to become drawn to books. I was inspired by how
much knowledge he had acquired through the wide variety of books that he was reading. Seeing
what he knew was enough to motivate me to become as literate as anyone else.
A persons literacy isnt just determined through the books they read, or the books they
write for that matter. In fact, ones literacy is acquired over time through a variety of experiences.
These experiences, whether negative or positive, will shape the path that you choose to take. Its
crazy to see where I am now after looking back at all things I experienced that put me where I
am today. I hope people will be able to learn from the mistakes that I made and see that literacy
plays a huge role in their everyday lives even if they dont realize it at the time. Literacy isnt
something that people are just born with, and it certainly isnt easily obtainable. All this being
said, literacy is absolutely a necessary skill that people should take every possible opportunity to
strengthen day in and day out.

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Citations
1. Sharma, Ghanashyam. "Cultural Schemas And Pedagogical Uses Of Literacy Narratives:
A Reflection On My Journey With Reading And Writing." College Composition &
Communication 67.1 (2015): 104-110. Education Research Complete. Web. 4 Feb. 2016.
2. Shen, Fan. "The Classroom And The Wider Culture: Identity As A Key To Learning
English Composition (Staffroom Interchange)." College Composition And
Communication 40.4 (1989): 459-66. ERIC. Web. 4 Feb. 2016.