Tag: literacy narrative

–Jimmy Wang

2020/02/05 this was the picture of me and my friends after I gave my senior chapel talk

It was the winter of 2015 that I decided that I would seek a change in my life. I had a video chat on a chilly night in November with Phoebe (or I think by then her name was Angela, and her name had always been Angela growing up), who was my middle school classmate, my best friend, and who took a big risk and went abroad. She applied to a American high school—Thatcher, in California—where according to her, everybody rode horses. It was almost bedtime in Shanghai, and a clear and bright Saturday morning in Cali. As we were talking, she went out to the nature. From the video camera, I could smell the freshness of the berries and cherries amongst the luxuriant foliage on the trees behind her. I asked Phoebe, “what trees are these?” “You gotta come here and we could figure it out. But there is one thing”, she said with a genuine pleasure, “I enjoy everything here. It is spiritual. It is free. It is nurturing.” And from that day I made a decision that impacted my entire life.

            Yes, if you’re still guessing, I was a Chinese student. I spent over 10 years, in Shanghai. I was at a top elite middle school, where we did classes from 7am-5pm. My English—uh, not so great—I would be fair: I think we all knew we sucked but we couldn’t do anything about it. And my decision on that November night brought me closer to proper writing, or to put it as the way I thought of this in 2015: how to write like an American.

            I joined TOEFL camps. And yes, that’s also true—the alleged Chinese training camps were all true. Alright, I admit it. However, I do not feel ashamed of it. Indeed, I enjoy thinking back on the history of my own growth and end up finding a TOEFL camp at the very first. I was bold. We learned how to make a statement, put some logic into our paragraphs, find some examples, etc. I believe my writing was probably rigid, dry, or any words that would make it not a good writing. I felt stressed during that time. However, TOEFL gave me a chance to explore knowledge at a small boarding school in Asheville, amongst the rugged North Carolinian mountains.

            I finally came to America in the fall of 2016. I want to stress that by going to a school in the U.S., my perspectives did not only change. Indeed, The way that I read and write jumped to another level. For example, before high school, I did not know about racism; I did not know about gender equality movement; I did not know about American presidential debates, etc. I was so restricted to the environment that I had been in—there was no other race (I used to only see Chinese people in my lives, and therefore I knew nothing about racism); there was also no one questioning the gender inequality. Great news: we don’t do political debates in China. Ha! Now looking back to my first year experience at my high school, I feel like I was a nicer looking Frankenstein (I think I look better than Frankenstein) trying to wiggle my way through all of the weird, new, unknown things around me. My change was big.

            Asheville School offered me a platform to succeed. Under my 1^st year Ancient history teacher, I practiced critical thinking and writing analytical essays. I spent the next three in his advisory group, making a life-long relationship with who guided and inspired me. The following year, I was lucky to meet another inspiring teacher, Mr. G, who introduced me to the world of creative writing. I built myself into a more dedicated and skilled writer, and with the recommendation from Mr. G, I joined a summer writing workshop at Kenyon College. There I met famous poets and writers in person. I teamed up with students whose parents won the Pulitzer Price. Later, I took the president seat of creative writing club as a senior, publishing our writing and sharing our voices with the local community. We read our works publicly at a local bookstore. These were all the crazy things that I couldn’t had imagined doing. I’ve changed, and I could not tell you which specific experience changed me. But I cannot describe how happy I am to be the way I am after doing all of the above.

I’m grateful of Phoebe, of my past, of TOEFL, of Asheville School, of all of the things that made me, me. I’m Jimmy, and welcome to my blog.

Throughout my educational experience, my reading methods varied, and the differences between the Western and Eastern cultures broadened my perspectives to read and look at the world in diverse ways.

When writing about the essay, which is about how my experience shapes the ways I read, it was a longtime flashback of the past few years. It seemed strange at the very first since I had never paid attention on the stories that impacted the ways I look at literature, and I had no ideas what I should do with the free writing that had no rubric and no specific requirement. Because of that, I deeply recalled from the beginning of my educational journey. I had never thought any differently of myself in the way of pursuing knowledge, especially in terms of literature. Reflecting my overall experience, I found myself, surprisingly, like to look for connections in different things. “In drawing these comparisons, I’ve come to see that no matter how the narratives are depicted or the emotions expressed, human experience and morality across cultures is tightly connected, without any formal agreement.” Though the different sides of the world are remarkably distinct, the human nature is all in agreement. This perspective also provides me a new clue to explore something new when roaming in the world of literature in the future.

I was initially worried about writing my first essay in months, in addition to it being my first college essay. Though, upon writing this narrative, I was able to reflect on my past experiences in a more culminating way then I was able to experience on my last Zoom day of high school. 

Since the English class I took during my second semester was not as writing focused, especially given that it moved to a pass/fail course, I consider the last time I seriously focused on my writing to be my Asian American Literature class. I loved the class material so much that I never realized how much my writing grew. I learned for example, to incorporate humor into my writing, to embrace gender and race differences in my analyses, and to play around with essay structures. Thinking about this class helped me reflect on how much my writing has changed throughout the years. 

In terms of the writing process, I was hesitant about the freewriting exercises. In my previous English classes, I have tried activities similar to the twenty questions where I wrote about the time and setting. I found that the pre-writing activity I used for this essay was much more effective because I had already laid and expanded a bit on instances that I could draw on for this essay. I particularly liked the listing out ten experiences, because I was able to connect two moments, one from when I was younger and one from when I was older that illustrated how my opinion on reading changed. While I decided not to write about those specific moments, I tried to weave the theme of reading changing from a distraction to an experience throughout the essay. 

Once I had completed the pre-writing, I used everything I had noted down to continuously write for two hours. When I finished, I was over the word limit, but it was easier to whittle down and organize what I had already written instead of pre-deciding what I wanted in each paragraph and then writing it all down.

I feel that these techniques simplified my writing process and I will definitely try to incorporate them the next time I write about myself, in whatever form that can take (job application, summer internship, another literacy narrative).

I actually quite enjoyed writing this piece. The recent few months have been so abnormal, that it was nice looking back into the past, although it was not that normal either. I relished reliving the early memories I had with reading, and the ones I had with my frinds in my ESL class, some of which I am still good friends with. It was definanlty tough trying to remeber things that happened so long ago, especially the feeling I had during those moments, but since they were very important to me, they were still somewhere in my head. This wasn’t one of those writing pieces where I took many breaks in between, which I often do. I wrote my litteracy narative in one piece. This is probably because I actually had a lot to say about my reading background, and have not really thought about it in a long time. This was deffinantly one of those assignments that I am relly glad I got to do.

Litteracy Narative

Read my Literacy Narrative here!

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Writing has never been my strong suit, mainly because it’s never been my interest. A considerable amount of all the reading and writing I’ve done in my life has been out of compulsion. So, I was pretty surprised when I didn’t hate doing the Literacy Narrative after spending almost 6 months (since I finished High School) of not indulging in any writing. In fact, you could say I almost enjoyed it.

A large part of the reason for this is the free-writing exercise we did before drafting the actual essay. Admittedly, the exercise seemed tedious and futile initially– I’d never done anything like it in the past. However, I actually came up with my central theme– ‘a sense of community despite differences’– by picking out similarities and noticing patterns in the memories related to reading and writing I had listed as part of the exercise. It also allowed me to express my thoughts in an unfiltered and raw manner. I didn’t have to worry about sentence structure, grammar, spellings, word count or any of that ‘basic English stuff’. I could write down my ideas exactly as they appeared in my mind. I think this helped me produce a more honest piece, if nothing else.

The clear and straightforward message the narrative puts across is that differences amongst humans are not only inevitable, but also necessary. We need to acknowledge these differences, respect them, and forge relationships in spite of them. And all the stories and articles that I referred to have a similar lesson.

On a more personal level, however, I learnt several things about myself. I’m not exactly sure if I am pleased with these things, but they’re definitely intriguing and got me thinking. I realized that the reason I was drawn to the stories of so-called ‘outcasts’ is because I subconsciously considered myself to be relatively unorthodox (in terms of society’s standards) as well.  

In conclusion, “Engaging with stories of strong interpersonal relationships between those who are conventionally ‘different’ gives me hope that maybe I’m not alone, in feeling alone.”

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The controlling idea of my Literacy Narrative is my process in overcoming a crucial oversight as a reader and writer: the inability to think critically and analytically about writing. Through writing my Literacy Narrative, I actually saw the way I have improved as a writer, and the main thing I learned from this is that the relationship between learning/improving as a reader and writer and time is far from linear. Although from elementary to middle school my vocabulary expanded, my sentence structures became more sophisticated, and my ability to elaborate on some complex ideas improved, my analysis might have actually gotten worse. Conversely, when I actually did find ways to improve my analysis, my ability to explain complex points wasn’t fully up to par. I think the most important thing here is that I keep trying: this will keep me mindful of both strengths and weaknesses.

I enjoyed doing the pre-writing exercises; I haven’t really done free-writing in a long time. Free-writing kind of showed me that this problem I had to overcome was the defining aspect of me as a reader and writer. The main thing I learned about myself, though, is that habits control much of the processed behind my reading and writing. Doing a few small key things, such as dedicating time to think about a particular passage or jotting down some notes, can be hugely helpful. Finally, I think the sentence people might find the most interesting is this: “After I wrote the rough draft, it continued to degrade with each coming day; my daily tinkering, a result of weak analysis desperately trying to find something to hang onto, led to a thesis that was long, complex, and almost impossible to argue” (2). Typically, the wisdom goes that the more time you spend on an essay, the better it will be, but I think people might find that sentence interesting since it suggests something of an inverted-U curve, that at a certain point, i’ve written the best essay I can, and apart from trivial grammar fixes, changing any more of the thesis, evidence, or reasoning in the essay will actually make it worse.

The pre-writing activity helped me organize my thoughts and arrange them in order even before I started writing the main essay. Overall, I think the activity was very useful as a first assignment for an English course. Of course, my writing is rusty after months without practice. However, this activity got me to the “zone” and guided me towards improvements in the future as I will constantly work on my weaknesses after I receive my assessment from professor Morgen.

Speaking of the essay, I chose to present my learning curve in chronological order. I don’t think one’s reading or writing ability is elevated by one or two random transformative events, but rather improved subtly through time. I picked the moments that changed or made a big impact on the way I read and write. Prose was casual but it encapsulated my motto on writing: to write at an eighth grade level but with sophisticated ideas.

“Is that weird that I start my essay with a conversation,” a boy waved for my attention and asked. I hurried over, with a smile on my face, and replied, “There is no right or wrong in writing.” 

The query and the anxiety etched on his face reminded me of my younger self in the writing class. Writing was one of my biggest fears. Fear of doing something wrong had once imprisoned my thoughts. One lesson, the teacher assigned a timed essay. Time marches on, there were only a few words and repeated phrases on the paper. Eraser shavings were all over my jeans. As the teacher walked across the classroom, I covered the paper with my hands hurriedly. Full of trepidation that my efforts would make me the subject of ridicule, I gripped the eraser and rubbed out the lines on the sheet again. 

Then suddenly, the eraser slipped from my fingers to the floor before I could retrieve it, the teacher snatched it from reach, and made her way to the front of the class. “From now on, no one needs an eraser,” she announced. “There is no right or wrong in writing.” 

My eraser had been my crutches, a way to guide me towards errorless. However, the teacher’s words were the turning point for me to realize that writing was not to be approached like solving a math problem, only one correct answer. So-called “mistakes” were the path towards exploration and self-expression. I resolved to continue without an eraser and proceed without consideration of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’.  

Devoting full concentration, I wrote according to my inner feelings and personal insights. For an hour, my writing covered the whole page, hundreds of thoughts flowed from my pencil to the papar. As inspiration blossomed, I was so self-engrossed in the task that I was unaware the class had ended. Without noticing, my dependence on erasers gradually diminished. 

Twelve years later, I signed up to be a writing class teaching assistant, and got the chance to look at versions of my younger self. Sitting in the corners, bundles of frustration, staring into near blank paper, pencil in one hand and an eraser in the other, they were all reluctant to let others see their writing, blind to their own capabilities. As I walked around the classroom, I understood both the journey I have been on and that my pupils were in the early stages of. Every class, the students were asking the questions that I used to ask, expressing the fears that I used to feel. They wanted to know how to correct what they evaluated as “errors” and were all despondent over “mistakes”. Like what my writing teacher has suggested for me, I encourage them to put down their erasers, at the same time, throw away their insecurities. ”There is no right or wrong in writing.” I said.

With a confident mindset we can grow creativity, rather than seeking to wipe away the unwanted. Similarly, we don’t possess “erasers” in life, learning from our mistakes and never repeating the same mistake is the way I turn them into valuable treasures.