Literacy_Narrative

Bruce Lee English Comp. 101 J. Gremillion September 9, 2012 Literacy Narrative Life as a Writer Writing has always been a fun thing for me as long as I can write on a topic that keeps my interest. Things I like to about include the following: myself, basketball, football, baseball, and things like that. However, one of the worst topics I have ever been given was assigned by my ninth grade English I teacher, Mrs. Erin Friedlander. In ninth grade, Mrs. Friedlander gave us a history topic to write a four page essay on. The topic was the Civil War. Now although i like to learn about the Civil War and the events that occurred during this time, the thought of writing about it was not very appealing to me. It just seemed like a very boring topic to write about. I didn't know where to begin. As I'm thinking about where to begin, the sudden realization hits me. When someone writes about themselves, they can make some of the things up in order to make the story more interesting. When writing about events that happened in history, there's no making anything up. Everything has to be exact and on point. These were the challenges I was faced with in writing about this topic, making it interesting and keeping the reader into the story. Although it was a rough and difficult topic to write about, I must have done a decent job because Mrs. Friedlander gave my paper a B+. Mrs. Friedlander also gave many assignments that I enjoyed writing about as well as reading. Mrs. Friedlander made us read the novel written by Harper Lee entitled, To Kill a Mockingbird. I was interested in becoming a lawyer at the time so as she said, "You are bound to like this book." My favorite character in the book was Jem's father, Atticus Finch. During the time of the Great Depression, he was assigned to be the defense attorney for a black male by the name of Tom Robinson who was accused of raping a white woman. During the part of the novel that the court was in session, the book was glued to my hands. I can recall myself reading for three hours straight in order to make it through the entire case at once. This reading assignment was followed up by a writing assignment, which happened to be my favorite, that pertained to this novel in a way, a paper about careers. Our final paper due in my freshman year of high school was a research paper. We had to research a career field that we were interested in going into after we graduated. As I stated before, at this time i wanted to become a lawyer. I looked forward to doing research on not only what it would take to become a lawyer, but also what time of work ethic it would take to become a great lawyer. I wrote on a specific type of lawyer called a defense attorney. I learned and wrote that I would have to go to school from anywhere between eight to ten years. Another reason it was one of my favorite papers to write was because i received, and very much earned through my hard work, an A. The unique thing about doing this paper was that i did most of my research and writing on the team bus on the way to basketball games. Basketball, one of the most important things in my life, is the topic of my favorite paper, and my personal best paper, I've ever written. My junior year we were given the option to write on a topic of our choice. Naturally, I chose basketball. It seemed to turn into an autobiography of my life from when I had discovered basketball. I first picked up a basketball around the same time that I started walking so some of the things I wrote about I had to ask my mother. It was so far back in time that I had trouble recollecting accurate information. There are some topics that you don't really care to write about and there are others that you look forward to writing. It all comes down to this. It doesn't matter whether you like to write about the topic or not. If you can keep the readers' attention throughout your story or essay, you will be a successful writer. Based on the stories that I've written in the past, in my opinion, I consider my life as a writer to be a successful one.