Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Personal Narrative Final
Personal Narrative Final
Escape
Ive always loved small spaces. The absence of distractions made them perfect for
reading. No distractions meant I could read more in less time. They were all over my house: the
back of my moms closet behind the jeans and shoe boxes, under my fathers work table, and my
favorite -- a little square of carpet between two couches and a wall. I would crawl underneath the
curving arms of the couches into the crux of the room and wile away the hours reading. When
the sun began to set, the light from the lone window would hit my corner so perfectly Id never
want to leave. Reading was and is my escape. I could let my overactive imagination run wild and
my curiosity roam free. I learned to read younger than most, and it was like someone had told me
the secrets of the universe. By the time I was in fifth grade I was reading at a 12th grade level. I
read anything and everything I could get my hands on. I loved fiction more than nonfiction but
wouldnt discriminate, and picture books were great but soon became boring. I went through a
Stephen King phase, I read Through the Looking Glass over and over, I poured myself into
fantasy/ adventure novels and of course I read the fluffy slice-of-life girl books that tended to
circulate in middle school girl social groups. Reading shaped me as a person, it made me free
Reading became my main source of literacy because of my curiosity for the world around
me. I was born curious. From the time I could walk to just a few years ago I would get lost in
stores because I would simply wander away silently to look at something that had caught my
eye. This was a direct relationship to my approach to reading. I read whatever looked interesting
-which was almost everything. In my mind I couldve spent my entire life there in my corner
reading. In class, when reading about Malcolm X in prison, I identified with this quote. I could
spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiositybecause you can hardly mention
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anything Im not curious about. (Malcom X: The Autobiography) This unrelenting curiosity is
something Ive lived my entire life. Ive thought this very same thing to myself on multiple
occasions and it was amazing to see it written out in a classroom text as it was.
As I got older I began to want to write my own stories --as most avid readers do. I started
with poetry and slowly moved into short stories and even attempted to write a novel at one point.
I would put my ideas and fragments of story into a small notebook I kept with me between 9th
and 11th grade. I had thousands of ideas but no way to move them together to form a cohesive
and coherent story. I would get a good group of characters and figure out their relationships but
when it was time to put those relationships into words I always fell short of what I was
attempting to convey. My writing style was and still is somewhat is abstract and odd. Lots of
words piled on top of each other and looped around in cliffhanger sentences, leaving the reader
increasingly confused until all of a sudden everything snapped together. As Ta-Nehisi Coates
said in an interview about classes at MIT, The writing in your head may well be the sweetest
music. But when you put it on to the page what you will get will likely only be some vague,
mushy approximation). My mind was too muddled to put on paper effectively. Its because of
this I didnt pursue writing as my passion in life., though I did, and still do, love it. Instead, I
pursued another strength and continued my appreciation of the literary arts in my own free time
by reading and listening to it whenever I can, and praising the people who are fantastic at
creating it.
Without literacy I would not have been able to be on the path I am on today. As of right
now I am a biology major in the hopes of going to medical school and becoming a neurologist.
I was good at. While reading, I was always able to predict how the characters felt and how they
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would react to certain situations before they were said outright in the book. Because of this, I
also thought about the people around me as if life were a book and by doing that I was able to
deduce how they felt. I realized I am extremely adept at reading peoples emotions and true
personalities they try to hide underneath cynicism and meaningless words. At the time it just
seemed like a good social tool. I had never thought about how this could help me in a
professional sense. This was all just a thought in the back of my head as I wandered through high
school life trying to answer the over-arching question of What do I want to do with my life. It
wasnt until the summer of my junior year when I began to read more psychology books rather
than my normal fiction. I found that my skill of reading people was marketable in the act of
diagnosing mental illnesses and disorders. With mental problems behavior is over half over the
diagnosis. This train of thought eventually led to me wondering what happens in a brain to create
these types of problems within a persons brain. I was enamored with the idea that I would be
able to tell exactly what was going on in someones brain. Not even just to diagnose disorders
and illnesses but to see the damage to the brains nerves that cause seizures and epilepsy. I wanted
to see the deterioration that caused Alzheimers and Dementia. Finding out that I could pull my
wild curiosity into a career was mind-blowing for me. I was overjoyed to have direction for the
first time in a while, and it had all been provided to me by my favorite pastime. Without books,
and reading, writing, and literacy in general I dont think Id be here at Howard University
Literacy has led me to all of my important life decisions so far: college major, future
career, and my over outlook on the world. A person can never improve if you dont consent to let
themselves step out into the world around them. My world was books and they pushed me to be
better in my reality. I am certain that I would be an entirely different person than I am now, if I
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hadnt read as much as I did. Neurology is one of my lifes great loves and I was lead to this
because of the knowledge and realizations reading made me come to just by broadening my
horizons. Instead of dedicating my life to work that Im passionate about, I may have spent my
life lost in grease at McDonalds. Due to literacy and my unending curiosity guiding me; I am
Works Cited
Coates, Ta-Nehisi. "Notes From the First Year: Some Thoughts on Teaching at MIT."
X, Malcolm, and Alex Haley. "A Homemade Education." The Autobiography of Malcolm X.