My Hypocrisy In My Writing

The life of an only child can be rough. Growing up, I had many lonely times. During these moments, I turned to writing as an outlet. I managed to love the writing process through journaling and writing creative stories. I found joy and relief in fluidly writing ideas on paper. As I passed through elementary school and middle school, my favorite subject was English because I was able to write creatively and read fiction novels that sparked my imagination. However, my early schooling years did not prepare me for writing in high school, where writing became dreadful. In high school, all my papers were research based and strictly academic. For every assignment, I felt like a robot typing on a computer trying to incorporate academic vocabulary

There was a side of language that I showed with my family and at school, and a contrasting side with my friends. The hypocrisy in my literacy became hard to control. I felt hypocritical because one side of me was the preppy kid who always spoke properly and respectfully, while my other side with friends spoke in slang. A constant battle existed between the language I was taught to speak and write, and the cultural slang I heard from my friends and through popular culture. I did not enjoy flipping the switch between different forms of literacy depending on my situation, but I knew that it was necessary. Ultimately, I felt like a hypocrite around my family. I wondered what they would think of me if they heard how I talked around friends. I wanted to be free in how I spoke, and not constrained to family expectancies. As time in high school progressed, I concluded that the understanding of a multiverse of literacies improved my conversations with other people. For example, as someone who spent countless, time-wasting hours on video games in high school, I understood the video game language. With the knowledge of this language came the ability to talk to other online players, and have a sense of relatability with

I just got home from basketball practice, and the thought of immersing myself into my video games sounded delightful. Instantly, my mind shifted from family and school language to video game language. It was this night where my idea of literacy would change forever. While I was playing, I met someone in one of my games who was my age. As we used video game language with each other online, we gained each other’s trust over the course of the months that followed, and we became friends. It turned out that he struggled with depression, and I was able to offer him advice and guidance through his family struggles. In these moments, I learned the importance of literacy, which was the ability to communicate with people from various social and cultural backgrounds. Literacy was a concept I thought of strictly in academics and writing due to my background in school, but my understanding of its various forms helped me to positively change my friend’s life. As the years have passed, I have learned to appreciate my ability to understand different literacies. What I once thought made me two-faced, I see as a means for me to become a well-rounded