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Kindergarten
My birthday is September 1st, so my mother chose to hold me back 1 year from entering school. I have always been one of the oldest in my grade level because of that, so my cognitive abilities were slightly more developed than my classmates'. I remember my teachers and family always complimenting my reading and writing skills. -
First Grade
We started the Accelerated Reader program at school. I was consistently one of the top-ranking students in my class in this program, and I made As on my spelling tests. -
Second Grade
In second grade I was reading chapter books. My favorite series of books were the Junie B. Jones stories.
I remember being assigned to read The Children Under the Bridge, but my mother refused to let me read it due to some content she didn't want me exposed to. I was assigned another book. -
Third Grade
In third grade we began learning to write in cursive. My spelling and reading skills were still developing at a normal pace. This is also when I learned what an autobiography was. -
Fourth Grade
In fourth grade I was accepted and transferred to a magnet school for the arts. The curriculum was much harder than the public elementary school I had come from. Here I began reading non-fiction, and I was required to read much more than I had been before. This was about the time when I started to dislike reading. -
Forging a Signature
I first learned the severity and consequence of forging someone else's signature in the fourth grade when I attempted to sign my mother's name on a math quiz that I did poorly on. My teacher and my mother had a serious talk with me about it and explained to me what I had done wrong and why it wasn't okay. -
Fifth Grade
This year I had to complete my very first book report. Our language arts classes focused heavily on reading chapter books with a focus on the human condition, research projects, and learning types of comparisons. We made weekly trips to the library where we learned how to search and find whatever we were looking for. We also spent 2 weeks listening to our teacher read Holes to us. I enjoyed that experience immensly and that became my favorite childhood chapter book. -
Computers
This was the first year I remember using a computer in school. They were mostly used for research projects and how to use the internet for academic purposes, but sometimes we were allowed to play games during our leisure time. -
History Day Project
I paired up with 2 other girls in my grade to complete a history day project which would be entered into a state-wide competition. We did our project over The Supremes, and it was for this project that I typed out my first 500 word essay. -
The Giver
The summer between 6th and 7th grade, I was assigned to read The Giver, a fiction novel. It was the most challenging thing I'd ever read and I was having a hard time understanding the story. Just before 7th grade started, I ended up moving to Texas, so I didn't finish the book. -
Seventh Grade
At this time, my writing skills really started taking off. I started writing stories, songs lyrics, and poetry. I recieved many accolades from my teachers on my creativity, grammar, and spelling.
I had been separated from my desire to read because I frequently got headaches (although my vision was fine) and it was seldom I was able to read a book of my choosing. I knew my way around a textbook, dictionary, and encyclopedia. My reading skills were very good, but I no longer enjoyed it. -
High School: Reading
From 2006 to 2010, I attended a public high school in Midland, Texas. Academically, I fit in with the honors students. But socially and economically, I fit in with the "regular" students much better so I chose not to participate in honors classes. In high school we read books such as Lord of the Flies, Brave New World, Of Mice and Men, and Animal Farm. My reading and analytical skills were excellent in comp-arison to my classmates.
This is also the time that I started reading a lot of plays. -
High School: Writing
Throughout high school, I don't remember using the computer very much; most of our work was still hand-written with the exception of a few research reports. My handwriting, grammar, and spelling were very good. I do remember struggling with the more complex sentence parts like predicates and direct/indirect objects. I learned how to form a references page for research papers and how to style MLA format.
My junior year I became a published poet. -
College: Undergraduate writing
Right after high school I started here at ASU for my undergraduate degree, I was a double major in Theatre and Communication, so over half of what I was reading and writing had to do with those subjects. I really got heavy into writing poetry and then Slam Poetry. I was a part of Studio 1 (a slam poetry group on campus). I was no longer hand-writing any assignments and almost everything was done on the computer. This is the time when the majority of my research writing skills were learned. -
Plagiarism
My freshman year, in a persuasive paper over a controversial subject of my choosing, I was accused of plagiarism for the first time in my life. Up until this point, all I had been taught about plagiarism is that it is copying word-for-word someone else's original thoughts without giving them credit. I had no idea that I had misinterpreted what plagiarism was, or that there was more to it than that. The professor allowed me to re-do the paper and I made a 100. -
College: Undergraduate Reading
I had never read so much non-fiction in my life until college. I still did not enjoy reading, but the content that I was reading was intriguing to me. My theatre classes exposed me to an endless number of scripts and books on techniques and theories. This is also when I learned how to read and write the phonetic alphabet, and I learned the basics of reading music. Thanks to my high school and college experince, I can read Spanish. -
Graduate School
Graduate school reading and writing is incredibly different than at the undergraduate level. The expectations placed on me have been very difficult to adjust to, and I've felt widely underprepared. Writing in a active voice instead of passive, learning APA format and Blue Book format from scratch, and writing professionally instead of academically were all completely new concepts for me and did not come easily. -
Now
I have just recently started to get back into an enjoyment of reading. Having the freedom to choose my own reading material makes a huge difference. I really love learning new things about all sorts of subjects. For enjoyment, I read articles about subjects in communication and theatre, fiction novels, self-help books, and the Bible (an audio version). I still continue to write poetry and I journal weekly. I have also started to learn calligraphy, which is much harder than it seems!
