Literacy Autobiography

Introduction: I am now finally taking College English, after this one and the reading class that I'm also taking, I'm done taking English Classes. Then I can finally start taking all the Architectural Classes, for sure will be a way more fun! Although, I have to admit, that this classes have been helping me somehow... My writing still not perfect, and may never be, but I can tell I improved. I enjoy the readings, the critical thinking, and writing per se. I just don't enjoy writing methodically, Maybe that's my problem. I just thought of that now.

My first assignment for this class is this Literacy Autobiography, that I'm posting here right now (I don't even now why, people don't read this anyway). Regardless, the instructor gave us all, some questions that we should answer, so she can get to know our reading/writing habits. I bet a bunch of people will reply to that as a survey, but I don't care, and I figured I should make it a essay out of that. Then I thought of publishing in my blog, because I actually think it turned out pretty decent.

That was when I thought about what sometimes I fail in mostly of my writings, because I am so passionate when comes to writing. I just want to put my ideas in the paper, I somewhat organize em, but this is not enough. Plus, most of the time I don't have the patience for edit and review what I write. I do, but I get frustrated, I want it to be perfect right away. And it's impossible, in fact, even when I read this again years from now, I will chose different words, expressions, or will change the way I'll tell the same story.

What proves me right, maybe I should just write, and not keep changing all the time, just correct the technical issues... Anyway, I will have to edit, revise, edit, revise, write, edit and revise once more if I really want to pass this class, and believe me, I will.

Literacy Autobiography

As far as I can remember, I began to write when I was around eight or nine years old. Obviously it wasn’t nothing really elaborated. It were journals, and if remember correctly, my grandma gave me my first journal. She told me that I could write about anything I wanted on it, I could also customize it by adding stickers, pictures and etc. My first journal was pink, with some figures of puppies on the front cover, and it had a little lock with little keys. So, I could make it totally personal and confidential.

I liked that, I started writing about my days, about school, friends, fun stuff, and bad stuff too. I learned that I could spit it out when I was mad or angry, I could empty my chest, speak my mind, and that made me feel good. I didn’t have to keep those feelings anymore, and on top of that, I knew it was safe in there. I’ve been doing this ever since, is almost like a therapy.

By that time, I already had a favorite book: The Little Prince, Antoine Saint Exupery – my mom used to read it to me all the time. My favorite phrase in is also taken from the same book, “For what you have tamed, you become responsible forever.” Evidently I didn’t fix this phrase nor did I understand its meaning when I was eight or nine years old. But this book still is my favorite book.

When I was in fifth grade one of my favorite classes (my favorite has always been Art class) was Literature. Once a week the teacher would open a huge locker full of books, we could check out a book, but we had to finish it before we could get a new one, this could take couple weeks, it was nice though to have this “free time” during class. Once we were done reading we had to do some activity related to the book, to summarize the history to the entire class. We had to be creative, and I absolutely loved that. We also had poetry classes, we learned about the poets, their works, and then we had recitals, plays and so on.

Reading became a habit to me, I would read book after book, all sorts of romances, novels, poetry, science magazines, and etc. I loved to transfer myself to the stories and make these movies inside my head, I’ve always found really entertaining. I’ve read a little bit of everything from Shakespeare to Nietzsche, George Orwell to Kafka, and so many more. Shakespeare is also one of my favorites, together with the Brazilian poets: Vinicius de Moraes, Cecilia Meireles and Carlos Drummond de Andrade.

I still read a lot - internet, newspaper, magazines, and books. The most recent books I read were the Twilight series from Stephenie Meyer, all four of them. Growing up, I’ve always spent my free time finding something to entertain myself. I loved doing crafts with my mom, but I was constantly working on art projects of my own, like: decoration of empty bottles, sawing, painting, drawing, reading and writing. Most of my writings are poems, some I turned into music, because I also play guitar and sing. I had a band, and miss all of that a lot, but the grown up world has taken me.

I’m, for the most part proud of my writings, during a period of time I even had a column in an E- zine, a internet magazine hosted by some of my friends,(they are journalists and have bands as well – they still do) about music, art and entertainment. My grandpa used to tell me that I should go to college for journalism. He liked my chronics, poems, and essays, and he thought I would be a brilliant writer.

In fact, he taught me a lot about reading, for he was always reading, so did my mom and dad. The thing that I wrote that really made me proud of myself, was a poem about and for my grandpa. It was the only thing I could do besides cry when he passed away.

I don’t think I’m nervous about writing, I go for it, but what makes me angry, frustrated and even depressed when comes to writing for college is to write in English. I just can’t, and because of that I have humongous fights with my husband every time he tries to correct me. I feel like the dumbest person in the universe, what hurts me, because writing is really important to me, it has always been big part of my life, and I could do it, but now, I can’t.

Is almost like suffering an accident, and becoming handicapped, there’s always hope, there’s always adaptation, but will never be the same. I still trying, I may never be perfect, (I have never been anyway) but hopefully I will succeed.