Advanced Essay #2: My perspective

Introduction:

Writing this essay was a major accomplishment for me as a writer. I am very confident with this essay. My goal for this essay was to explain how literary information was consumed by me. People often take the amount of accessibility to information we have for granted, I wanted to express how that can shape a person, also how it shaped me. Another goal I had for this essay was to mention the school system and how I perceive it. I am proud of my in-depth scenes of memory, I feel like they contain a good amount of detail. Something I can improve on as a writer are my transitions and staying on topic, I often mix a lot of unrelated ideas that don't necessarily need to be in the essay. In my future essays I want to state an idea and write only about that so things will be more neat.

Essay:

When I was in kindergarten, being special was one of my believed qualities. Not special in a bad way but special as in different. Reading was something that commonly occurred during my idle time. It wasn’t specifically books that I would enjoy reading it was everything I could comprehend. I remember reading a lot of labels, the thrill of reading at the time came from my ability to look at a word and correctly pronounce it aloud or in my head. So, when I was with my father he would point to objects with words on them and ask me “what does that say?” and I would look at it and say the words aloud. Sherman Alexie had a similar experience in The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me where he states “I read the backs of cereal boxes. I read the newspaper. I read the bulletins posted on the walls of the school, the clinic, the tribal offices, the post office. I read junk mail. I read auto-repair manuals. I read magazines. I read anything that had words and paragraphs.” I felt really good knowing that I could comprehend these words that were at the time new to me, I felt very intelligent for my age and I thought I was ahead of the class. Now,when I went to school I was never the super arrogant, smart guy who answers every question and corrects the teacher; I was a shy little dude and very observant. My mind was constantly racing. I remember sitting in class, my hands folded atop the desk, my back pressed against the chair, and my eyes glued to the front of the classroom where my teacher was. No matter how focused I was, my thoughts were in nonstop motion. I see this as a curse and a blessing; I get easily distracted but it’s by my own thoughts (which sounds strange out loud) but if my mind wasn’t as active as it is, would I be the person I am today?

Back then, information was consumed willingly, not that knowledge is getting shoved through my skull now but there was more of a longing for learning new things. Currently, I feel as if the only purpose of going to school is to get good grades so I can assumingly have a better future. The younger me didn’t know as much so the level of curiosity was combated against new information taught in school. That curiosity is long gone and now school feels like a chore instead of a resource. My argument is that if school was only about learning, grades wouldn’t exist.

New words became my favorite thing to learn about in the 3rd grade. We had a different set of vocabulary words every week. Throughout the week my classmates and I had homework with these vocabulary words such as definitions, sentences, and organizing. The way it was set up, the homework we had to do with the vocabulary words spread across three days. Eight year old me wanted to maximize my playing time so when we got the vocabulary words on Monday, I would do all the homework that same day so I would have two free days with no homework to do. That became my go-to strategy for completing homework and enjoying my youth. I was doing what I was supposed to do and what I wanted to do.

In 4th grade comic books and cartoons were my favorite. I felt so inspired at the time which lead me to begin making my own. Being only 9 years old with the limited knowledge about computer softwares, I hand-drew all my comics in a notebook I had for class. All the characters were developed by me and I was single handedly crafting scenes and plots. My creativity was fueled by comics and cartoons and I soaked up the interesting things and began doing my work using these things as tools of influence.