Literacy Narrative Reflection

My literacy narrative.  Sigh.  There is so much that could be said about this assignment. 

Let's start from the beginning.  Or before the beginning.  When I first heard about this project, I seriously debated not doing it.  (and this is coming from the girl who thought she had to make perfect grades in high school!)  As it was described to us, I felt like there were only two ways to write this paper: either as a metaphor, or as a paper centered on me and my writing progression.  The former seemed impossible to me.  When I read the Living Like Weasels and Carpet is Mungers, neither one made any sense to me, and weasel analogy kind of grossed me out.  Because I felt that I wasn't creative (or crazy) enough to write a good metaphorical literacy narrative, I was stuck with option number two.  Writing about the development of my literacy seemed very self-centered, like when you write a resume or scholarship application and only talk about all the great things you've done.  I hate doing those, so I thought a 3-5 page paper would be absolutely horrid.  This is what I wrote for my writing into the day...

I hate papers about myself.  Who am I?  Who cares? ...but my greatest opposition is this: I am dead.  "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live! Christ lives in me!  ...It would be like the ocean boasting about its water, when the real majesty lies in what lives within.   In the grand scheme, I'm not important!  It almost seems wrong...to focus three pages completely on myself and my desires/accomplishments...Perhaps that's why I haven't started!!  "Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool because I would be speaking the truth.  But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say."  Should I, like Paul, also refrain??

However, I realized the centrality of this project to the course and its eventual impact on my grade and decided that since my parents were paying this semester of college for me, that I should honor them and do my best to make good grades.  Plus, from the outside, not doing a homework assignment just looks lazy.  After deciding to do it, I then waited until the last minute to actually start writing because I didn't really know what to say.  It started out as a general narrative on how I learned to read, but about halfway through the first page, I realized how I could change up this assignment so that it didn't feel so self-absorbed.  I look back now and it seems obvious... I wonder how I didn't see this sooner!  I decided to write the first draft not focusing on how I have improved my literacy, but how God has impacted my life, including but not limited to, my literacy.  Just changed the focus. :)

My second draft was hard for me to write too.  I remember being rather annoyed that I had to completely rework an essay that I had already put alot of myself into.  Often times when I write an essay, I will outline and revise its form, structure, and thought progression in my head, wait until the night before its due, and then dump it all out on paper all at once.  The idea that I had to go back and dig up all these old ideas that felt complete to me and readdress them felt kind of frustrating.  Eventually this second draft served as a giant experiment of sorts.  From the October 4th assignment, I thought it would be cool if I combined the idea of focusing on one specific event, describing it in overblown detail and the idea of converting it to a poem.  The poem idea also flowed nicely into the mentor text that our writing group had found in the library, Owl Moon.  I decided that it would be neat to reminisce about the night I was saved through the mood of Jane Yolen's children's story...I have rerun it many times in my head, but have never taken the time to write it poetically.  In the end, I actually really enjoyed doing this draft, but when I finished, I found it difficult to throw the context back on my literacy and still stay within the same lyrical mood, so it kind of fell to the wayside.

For the final draft, at first I was really excited about the rolling due date, but the longer I thought about what to write, the more I couldn't decide!  There are so many possible things to talk about, so many different perspectives to take that I felt like the extra time just made me more indecisive.  Several times I thought about trying the idea my teacher suggested, which was to start at my 40th birthday and work backwards, which was a really cool idea, but what if I didn't meet my goal?  It felt presumptuous to me.  A lot of things can happen in 22 plus years.  I also considered completely rewriting it, viewing the third draft more as a progression of ideas than as a replacement for the first two.  I would use it to relate the literacy narrative to what's been going on recently, focusing on apologetics.  In the end I chose to dismantle the end of the first draft and add these other new thoughts to the end.  I still ended up liking the first draft better, perhaps because of its focus, but I wasn't about to erase my work. :)

Overall, this assignment was an all-around struggle for me, but it was certainly successful in driving home the fact that literacy is dynamic and hopelessly intertwined in each of our lives.