At first writing this narrative was very strange for me because I hate talking about myself and living in the past. This really pulled me out of my comfort zone but I am glad it did because it showed me a lot about myself. I was surprised to get an answer about why I am the way I am when it comes to writing and reading. I thought it was just some random anxiety that came from wanting to succeed, which I am sure plays some factor in it, but it has more depth and more background to it. I guess you really do learn about yourself in college, this was an odd yet cool way to being that journey. A line in my narrative that will catch attention is definitely, “So, I went in my room, slammed my door, and threw a chair across the room.” Just by looking at that line you would think that has nothing to do with the process of learning to read or write. Even just the title, “The Frustration’s Of a Six-Year-Old,” no one would read that and say that it relates to english. But trust me it has so much to do with the foundations of my career in english.
Writing the parts of my literacy narrative about my time in middle and high school was fun because it reminded me of many good times. I never really sat around and thought about how my perception of reading and writing has changed throughout the years, but this narrative and the prerequisite free writings helped me see that. The freewriting brought up memories that I had almost completely forgotten about like that reading competition in second grade. Through writing this I realized more that I want to be remembered. Not just like “Oh, he was in my English class in high school” but remembered by my character or something that I created such as some of writing. I’ve had this conversation with multiple friends before as kind of an existential crisis moment but thinking about it now I think deep down that everyone has a small desire of that sort. After writing this narrative I think that people would think that “Maybe that’s why I could read for hours upon hours, it allowed me to escape after a day of doing schoolwork and playing baseball against my wishes” is the most important sentence. I feel like everyone experiences this kind of escape with an activity they enjoy.
The photo in my post is of my school’s creative writing magazine where I have a poem about that friend mentioned. I stood in front of a room of mostly unfamiliar faces and read it aloud and afterwards the head of this magazine asked me to be in it. That’s probably one of my better writing achievements.
The initial splurges of thoughts definitely helped my mind organize what I was attracted to in reading: immersion into another world. I came up with four different beginnings to my piece until I landed on one that I felt had the experience of immersion most accurately described without directly saying it.
The essay was a lot harder to write than I thought it would be. Once I got going on an idea though the words practically jumped their way out of my mind and onto the screen. I found it easiest to go chronologically through what I remember of reading. I was definitely surprised at how most of my memories of reading boiled down to five main books/series: Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Bone, Redwall, and Warriors.
” I don’t remember the specific moment it happened, nor do I quite know why, but at some point in the latter half of my junior year at high school I felt a yearning for something familiar. Among my thoughts of schoolwork and becoming an adult, a desire to travel back to the moments of childlike freedom snuck into my daily consciousness. This craving led me back to my bookshelf, and, over the course of several months, I traveled back to the worlds of Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Redwall, and –most fondly– Bone.” – Me (Isaac Gazmararian)
A quick note on the visual aid: the drawing is supposed to be my experience reading Harry Potter, as I’m transporting into the pages of the book to the grounds of Hogwarts.
While writing the essay I was forced to strike an overarching structure to my reading and my thoughts about reading. And now that I’m done with it, all I want to do now is read another book… and get lost in another world.
Writing part one of my literacy narrative was a very eye-opening experience for me. I hadn’t thought too much about how reading and writing impacted my life because by now it has been integrated into my normal everyday life. Starting with the freewriting exercises made me recognize just how lengthy my journey with reading and writing has been. I’ve grown into an entirely new person because of this journey and by the end of my narrative I realized just how much change has occurred in my life. I used to despise writing, but maturing into the person I am today has made me understand the great value and strength it has given me. I grateful to be able to express my ideas and point of views because of writing and I cannot imagine a life without it. Reading has been a part of who I was since the very beginning and I think the sentence that a reader would identify as the most interesting would be when I state, “No matter what stress or issues I faced, I could always retreat into the pages of these imaginative worlds filled with love and happiness.” I believe anyone who has a connection with reading can recognize the truth in this statement in one way or another. This experience has once again demonstrated to me the importance and power of reading and writing. Up until this point I had overlooked both of these very influential activities, but now I see their value once again and can fully appreciate their significance in the world.
In my narrative, I talk about how I went from a unmotivated writer to someone who loves to write. This happened in my junior year of high school when my teacher gave us an open ended assignment which barely had a rubric.
During this process, I learned that it was much harder to setup a page than I thought. For my creative medium for the narrative, I recorded myself reading the story that I wrote in junior year. I spent about two hours figuring out how to add it properly because whenever I put the file in the page, it gave me the message of “audio file not supported for security reasons”. I ended up finding out that one has to pay in order to add audio files to a word press page, so I just made a cute little photo that goes along with my story.
Writing the narrative itself was relatively easy. The moment I describe in my story happened relatively recently, so I could recount some of the more intricate details more vividly. In relation to the free writing activity before hand, this was easier. During the activity, I spent more time stressing out about the five minute time limit than actually writing. When I was alone writing in my room, I was calm, collected, and had my creative juices flowing. The transition from free write to narrative was simple because in one of my free writes, I wrote about the same topic that I tackled in my narrative- I just expanded on that story.
I learned that it can be hard to tell your own story. Even though the details were there in my mind, putting words that I wanted to say on the page was pretty hard. I was suprised that it took me so long; the actual writing process took me about an hour and a half.
The most interesting sentence in my opinion would have to be “I would think to myself, ‘why work harder if you’re already meeting your expectations?’ ” This is because I think a lot of people have this outlook on life whereas many people totally disagree. Lots of my friends this year told me that they would be disappointed with anything below straight A’s which in my opinion is a recipe for sadness. I know my outlook as a junior inst the most motivational, but it definitely kept me grounded as a person.
This week I uploaded my Literacy Narrative Assignment. Writing this narrative was enjoyable because it allowed me to revisit some of my past memories related to reading and writing. Prior to writing this, I answered the free writing prompts. I found writing these prompts to be easier than writing the final essay because I simply had to write stories about experiences. I was surprised by how vividly I could remember some of these events, especially since some of them occurred more than a decade ago. When I put the narrative together, I had some difficulty deciding on which details to include. Additionally, some of the topics that I wrote about during the free writing were unrelated to each other, so it was difficult to decide where to write what. I think an outside reader would find this line from my post to be the most intriguing: “Without my immersion into reading and writing, I would have never considered alternatives to science.” This line reveals how reading and writing changed my perspective, interests, and future goals. https://9shivanik9.wordpress.com/literacy-narrative/
My avatar is a picture a decided to draw tonight. I’ve been playing a game called Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice for the past couple of months and decided to take some inspiration from it. One of the main characters uses a sword for a brief portion of the game, but unlike others, she uses the weapon only as a form of defense than to harm others. For me it sounds like a “do no harm, but take no s#%t” mentality and that’s how I like to live my life.
I kept most of the image in black and white because when I typically make art, a monochrome theme is easier for me to work with. I added in blue and red as they are my favorite colors and add almost a yin-yang effect to the image. The blue is centered in the image on the hand to make it look like I’m focusing my chi (Avatar reference) and the the red is centered on the design from Slipknot which is a band I just saw live. I’m also wearing a hoodie because I always have one on when the weather gets colder.
The tag on the sword reads “Big stick” in homage to the Teddy Roosevelt quote. I feel that there is a time and place to take action and a time to sit back and let the course fo action play out.
I chose this picture as my avatar simply because the man depicted looks intrigued and happy. I love getting perplexed over little things that make me happy, and this picture makes me wonder what’s bringing about his toothy smile. This image relates to the topic of the class because this image holds an immense amount of information that is unsaid, like the comics.
The caption for this image online is “poor man.” However, I think there’s more to this man than being sick. I related to this image because I believe there is little about me that people know and a lot about me that people assume. I also sometimes feel as though I’m an old man living life again in a younger body. I have an appreciation for the older things in life that last a while and grow in value. The font used in this image is “Herculaneum” it’s a strong yet ancient font, like the old man.
Another aspect of the picture that’s important is its black and white filter. Black and white are the two most classic colors and add texture to everything they accent. Black and white are also my two favorite colors.
A picture captured from the
reflection of a darkened computer screen shows one of the few images of myself
I keep on my phone. I like to think of the photo as a candid selfie: a still
life taken without any intention besides capturing the moment – that moment involving
me studying for junior year finals in a dragon pajama onesie at my dining room
table, probably eating Twizzlers, bored out of my mind. By the end of my junior
year, similar scenes had become so commonplace in my life that by the time
finals rolled around, not commemorating that part of my life somehow felt like
an injustice. I chose this particular picture of myself to add to my collage because
it is an honest depiction of me.
The main picture in my
collage is of a summertime dusk in my neighborhood with Venus and a yellow, waning
moon that, from a favorable vantage point, looked to be hovering directly over
my house. I love to watch the sky from my neighborhood. In the suburb of a suburb
where my hometown nestled, the sky always seemed to answer our unspoiled stillness.
Living 45 minutes away from the city among the locally owned coffee shops and
the single acre family farms, phenomenon such as golden celestial bodies piercing
through the deepened blue of an early evening sky are possible. Later that night,
just enough starlight would seep through lightyears of space, blackness, and the
light of streetlamps to keep me up for hours, dizzying myself with wonder and
an uninterrupted upward gaze, bemused at my luck to witness something so
clearly that was wholly hidden to so many other peoples and places in the
world.
Of course, none of this
magic is remotely perceptible through the lens of an iPhone camera, and I knew
that when I reached for my phone. Taking this picture was less about my camera’s
ability to represent the scene the way I saw it and more about securing a keepsake
from time. If that photo had been taken in better quality, I’m sure I would be raptured
by the beauty of the sky all over again with each viewing, but the photo would
call for less mental work reliving the experience. Through time, the memory conveyed
would become less and less concerned with recalling the night itself and more
about the photo. That being said, this photo (and others like it) functions
best on a personal level; its significance is not something readily accessible
to an unfamiliar eye.
This is exactly why I chose
it as my avatar.
My blog is intended to be a
space not only where readers can hear my voice but can see through my eyes. In
my writing here, I want to express what I perceive as true and real – to learn
to communicate clearly enough to make the esoteric recognizable and intimate.
As A writer, I want to be able to lend whoever chooses to hear me my whole self,
so they can feel through my experience and see from my point of view.
The image that I have chosen to represent for my avatar is of a man covering his mouth and displaying the label of “minority” on his forearm. The name of the course is ” The Secret Language of Comics: Visual Thinking and Writing” and I chose this picture which utilizes the contrasting colors of black and white to symbolize the power struggle between people of color and white Americans. The silhouette of the young man covering his mouth is a direct parallel to the silencing of minorities who wish to find an America where equity is possible for people of all walks of life regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, sexual identity, and nationality. This picture embodies my interest to provide a voice for people who are unable to voice their opinions due to the fear of being ostracized for their beliefs.
