As I explore my experiences with literacy my most vivid memory comes from a very late age. While most people draw their memories with reading, writing from a young age, I get mine from my eighth grade year. As a student up until this point I had done just enough to get through the courses and move on to the next year. My eighth grade year seemed to be extremely challenging, and this was due to various factors whether it be the demographics of my school since I was one of three white people in my grade, or my home life where I was adjusting to a new house with a new step mom, but my English teacher had spent the whole year causing me a great deal of agony. Every paper I turned in, I failed, and every effort I made to step up my writing was not …show more content…
I was fortunate enough to see what a difference it was to be literate, and not to be, so when I was able to see how many more opportunities reading and writing could give me, I threw myself into trying every way that I could to be the best. If I wanted something, then I couldn’t expect for it to be handed to me. This is why my debate career went hand-to-hand with my writing journey. Not only was I working tirelessly on reading every news article I could about current topics, but I was analysing them and finding their mistakes, as well as my own. I would construct arguments from my findings and go head to head with other students who were doing the same exact thing. It was in those moments on stage when my name would be called that I saw first hand the opportunities literacy was giving me. Being literate means building a life that I can be proud of where I am giving myself the biggest opportunity of all, and that is to continue to grow and learn more about the world around me. The words that my eighth grade teacher told me will always be in the back of my head taunting me, but as a scholar it is my obligation to push past the many obstacles that come my way, so that I may be better