Literacy Memoir Draft # 1 As a kid, I was always outside playing with the kids on my block.

I was never one to sit inside and do homework, read, or study (except when I was forced). I still got good grades, and I was in all the accelerated gifted and talented, or hon rs courses. I got moved into th ifted.an ~ -----d ~-----to., Men ed class when was in 3- grade. I stayed in these types of courses al throughout m K-12 education. This gave me an advantage over my peers who were not put into these courses, as I was given special attention and higher level assignments and essays to enhance my knowledge and skills. Even though I was in all of these high level courses, I never really took a liking to reading until my 10th birthday. For my birthday, my best friend Parker gave me the I" book of -< ~ . Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. At first, as any other 10 year old would, I ~ 0 didn't like the gift. Why would my best friend get me a book for my birthda It wasn't until ~ eabout a week later that I started reading the book. I sat in my room at my desk for about 5 hours _ ~ ~ engrossed in it, thrilled by the adventureSl>f1lle1hr~. I finished it in two days. ~ This was the most I had ever read, and in such a short amount of time. I had finally found -t 9something I was interested in reading. Over the next few ~eks or mon~J went on to purchase \p) all 13 books in the series and read every single one. This was the first time I ever read withou .I \C being told to by a teacher. This experience improved my reading speed and comprehension and also my vocab because I looked up the meaning of several words I did not know in the stories. 0 IJ to-{)\!\~ tf After I finished the Series of Unfortunate Events, I was unable to fmd another series of \.j o books I en'o ed and so I stopped reading. Even in my English classes I could not bring myself ~.J' \i~to read the assigrie ooks causing my grades to drop. I hated every English class I had because v v L'"' I did not enjoy grammar, and none of the books that we ~med...to us inteIl ed me. I b e .... so uninterested in English that dropped out of the H n r(En lish course m so homo _eaL. because I just did not care enough to do the reading. This all changed my junior year with my _English teacher Ms. Hall. he was a short, thin woman in her 30's who had so much energy and excitement to teach the class that I just couldn't not pay attention to her. She was the best teacher I ever had, in any class. The first book she assigned us was Into the Wild by John Krakauer. I loved the book so much that I finished it the first week it was assigned, even though we had abou 6 weeks until we had to have it finished. Ms. Hall inspired me to read again and showed me new enre of books that I am interested in. Since then, I have been reading regularly an ave rediscovered my love for reading. If I had not had her as a teacher, I would most likely still hate reading and just choose not to do it. She reinstalled the desire to read in me and therefore helped me to improve my reading skills and literacy. Once I got to college here at UNC Charlotte, I was assigned by my introduction to engineering teacher to read a book called The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. At first I wasn't very interested as it is a self-motivation, self-improvement type book. Once I actually started to read it, because I had to present a PowerPoint about it to my class, I became very interested with the different "habits" that were discussed in the book. I have only read about the first three habits so far, but it has vastly changed my outlook on college, and life in general. This book has taught me that only I can make something happen for me, no one else is going to hand it to me. I have to be proactive and get done what needs to be done. Since .3 ~ reading the book I have become much more organized and motivated to focus on my studies and -t ~ do well in all of my classesJ f believe that a bi art of literacy is.the motivation and desire to k.-> earn and to comprehend new material. A big part of my own literacy comes from reading books 0 an w at t ey liave 0 offer:-"

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