Emily Cashwell Literacy Narrative A literacy path is like a roller coaster.

Each stage in the path has twists and turns, mountain like hills, and stomach-wrenching drops. It is inevitable that mistake will be made, however that is the thrill of discovering new techniques and styles to illustrate thoughts and ideas. My roller coaster ride to my literacy path involves realizing that mistakes are sometimes beneficial to learning, and finding my own style despite the set prompts and styles. Through the help of many teachers and family members, I have been able to break through the literacy standards, and find the perfect balance between uniform writing and free writing. I have always struggled with wanting everything to be perfect. I really struggle with making mistakes because I want to do it right the first time. I believe that everything has a role and a spot, and when I feel like something is not exactly how it should be I can get extremely frustrated. This was a huge challenge in not only my writing ability, but also in learning how to write. I wanted every letter to be perfectly written and match the examples exactly. My earliest memory of learning how to write is in third grade, when my teacher, Ms. Martin, taught the class how to write in cursive. She told us we would be required to write in cursive in high school, and many dreaded it, but I was actually excited to learn the beautiful font. As a young eight year old, I remember thinking that the curves and script font of cursive was so beautiful and elegant. I longed to write like that, however my shaky, inexperienced hand made it challenging. I remember practicing every upper and lower case letter over and over again until I thought my hand was going to fall off. Despite the hours of practice, my cursive writing never seemed to match the example perfectly. I really struggled over the imperfections and put myself down with every incorrect mark. I continued to practice writing in cursive over time and I improved more

and more each day. Ten years later, I write in cursive on a daily basis and I find it to be neater than my print hand writing. Although I do write in print at times, I feel like cursive is much faster and it allows my hand to flow freely according to my thoughts. Writing in cursive doesnt require as much time and thought as writing in print and it makes writing much easier and smoother for me. Looking back on my frustration, I realize that instead of focusing on the imperfections, I should have focused on the progress I had made since I started. The same can be applied to my writing. I have learned that it is important to recognize my growth instead of focusing on the flaws in my writing. I cannot expect to write a perfect first draft, because sometimes the greatest ideas are sparked from mistakes. I continued to learn about the beauty of imperfections as I grew older. I am the youngest of three sisters. I have always looked up to my sisters and when I was younger I used to copy their every move while trying to be just like them. My oldest sister, Elizabeth, has always been a powerful writer. She is the bookworm of the family, and I believe the vast amount of books she has read have helped to better her writing ability. Elizabeth has always been a very strong, eloquent writer and has the ability to paint pictures with her words. Her writing skill at any age has always been admirable. Despite her strong writing skills, I never found myself to be extremely jealous of her because I knew that writing was her forte and calling, and not necessarily mine; however that did not stop me from attempting to write just like her. When she was younger she had a journal that she would constantly write in. She would write detailed stories on various subjects, ranging from murder mysteries to cheesy romance stories. I was always impressed by her beautiful cursive hand writing on the lines of the paper and I admired the lengthiness of her stories. I loved the sound of the crinkle of the paper as she flipped from page to page and it sparked the desire to attempt to write my own story. One long car ride

home from my Grandparents, I decided to test my story writing ability. For a six year old, I wrote an impressively long story about princesses and princes and unrealistic fairy tale endings. Despite the length, the story lacked a plot and was more so a conglomeration of my jumbled thoughts that were swarming through my head at the time. Due to my competitive spirit and the typical sibling rivalries, I immediately began to compare myself to my sisters writing. I noticed how much more advanced hers was, and how much more freely her thoughts seemed to be expressed. My feeling toward her writing seemed to align with our relationship as siblings. She is six years older than I am, so she was much more mature and had experienced more than I had at six years old. I have always admired my two older sisters and strived to act in the way that they do, because they are my role models. The same goes for Elizabeths writing. I looked up to her skills and despite the slight of jealousy I felt when reading her writing, I admired her writing ability. Her writing was descriptive and I was able to picture the story in my head while reading it. I was able to learn a new skill with each sentence I read. I compared my writing to hers and I realized what I could add to better my writing. I am thankful for the time that I was able to watch Elizabeth grow as a writer, because I learned so much from it. She is now an English teacher, and even today I use her as a resource to aid my writing ability. I am constantly emailing her papers and essays to revise and bouncing off writing ideas for my classes. Although we do not possess the same love for writing or the same writing skills, I was still able to learn so much from Elizabeth because of her eloquent and beautiful writing and she has been a huge influence in my literacy path. Family has always had a powerful impact on my literacy path. My mom is an English teacher, as well as my sister. I have grown up around the talk of English lesson plans and the summary of various novels. My parents began my literacy path at an early age, with audio books

in the car and bedtime picture books such as Goodnight Moon. Although they were short stories that were meant to provide a moral lesson, I learned lessons on syntax and the structure of writing. I was able to learn rhyming techniques and the short stories helped me notice the flow of sentences and how words should be paired together. I am appreciative of the influence of literature in my life at such an early age because it allowed me to be more imaginative and have bigger dreams. Instead of seeing something on the television, I was forced to paint a picture in my head based on the words that I was reading, which in return made me more imaginative and innovative. Having a mom who is an English teacher can have its ups and downs. I am so thankful that I always have a person who can revise my papers and give me pointers, however it can be extremely frustrating when my mom is the one behind the red pen. It is hard enough for me to accept the constructive criticism of a teacher, but when it comes from my own mother, I automatically want to start bickering with her over the corrections. I find myself trying to justify my mistakes and attempting to explain the mistakes I made and find a reason why they are correct. Corrections seem to have a deeper meaning when they come from family. I found conflicted between wanting to take her advice and corrections, but still believing that my writing didnt need to be changed. There were many times that I would bring a paper to her and she would immediately give me constructive criticism but I would take it the wrong way and walk away in tears because I felt like my writing was subpar. Of course my mother was always just trying to help me in my writing, but as a dramatic teenager, I always took it as an insult, as if I had failed as a daughter. Throughout high school, I found myself proofreading papers and looking up grammar rules before showing my mom my paper. I knew my mom had good intentions when revising my paper, but it still aggravated me to see the corrections made. I was so determined to get fewer red pen marks than the time before that I actually learned more and

more about grammar rules and gained new ideas about structure and format. The frustration I felt from my mistakes and flaws actually ended up motivating me to work harder. I am so thankful that my mother has been here throughout my literacy path to help me understand ways that will help me and ways that will hold me back. Despite the many frustrations and mistakes I made, I was able to learn not only a lesson about writing, but also a lesson of learning from mistakes. Standardized testing is something I have always struggled with. The writing portion of exams, such as the SAT or AP exams can be so restrictive and almost makes it impossible to express true talent. Throughout school, students have been taught to write in a certain format for the purpose of standardized testing. I find this practice of writing to be extremely debilitating because it causes you to become so accustomed to a certain style. The required writing style for tests can be very challenging to some and it fails to accurately display their writing ability because of the restrictions it places on writing. I was never allowed to just freely write without a page or paragraph requirement. It was engraved in my mind to automatically writing a five paragraph essay. It was guaranteed that on 95% of paper instructions, the words Five Body Essay would be written in bold somewhere on the paper. Every time I write something, I automatically outline a five body paragraph with a three prong thesis statement. By the end of my junior year, I was so used to writing in such a strict style I would suffer from serious writers block if I was given the chance to free write. I would automatically attempt to reword the prompt in a way similar to standardized testing so that I would be able to write it in a strict format. There were many times when I stared at a blank word document on a computer screen for hours at a time. Throughout the countless SAT essays and AP essays, I was so used to writing a multi-page essay in forty minutes or less that I forgot the beauty in devoting time to writing and relishing in the beauty of free thought. Over the span of high school, I realized that although it is important to

learn how to write with strict formats and time limits, it is also important to allow myself to write in a way that appropriately expresses my thoughts and ideas. However, it was difficult to find the perfect balance of standardized test writing and creative writing. It was also difficult to determine the appropriate time to write in each format. One teacher who has helped me in freely expressing myself was my senior year AP Literature teacher. Ms. Dyer made me realize that despite the strict format of standardized testing, I can still write freely in ways that expresses me as a person. Reading books always helped to spark ideas on creative free writing. The rigorous AP level motivated me to read deeper into literature. I learned to read between the lines and to dig deeper into the novels, plays, or poetry that I read. I gained new ideas and techniques from every piece of literature I read in the class. I quickly learned how to take the same techniques in classic literature and put it into my own writing. Because of the literature I read in class, I would pay more attention to the detail I placed in my writing. I always tried to add a deeper meaning to my sentences. Ms. Dyer helped me mold and create sentences that flowed better and expressed the meaning behind my words in a more intelligent manner. Because it was an AP course, we were taught how to write efficiently in short amounts of time, like 30 minutes. At first I was so focused on finishing in the time frame, I forgot to actually dig deep into the meaning of the words that I was writing. Ms. Dyer served as a constant reminder to always include a meaning more than just letters on the page. Every word needed a deeper meaning and purpose. She would always tell the class to value every word and value the meaning of it. AP Literature and Ms. Dyer were huge parts of my literacy path. Although it could be extremely challenging, I was able to find the perfect balance between the uniformity of standardization and freely expressing my creativity.

My literacy path has been shaped and molded by many influential people and classes. The twists and turns of the literacy roller coaster have taught me so much about who I am as a writer and who I have the potential to be. Despite the challenges that are accompanied with striving for perfection and the strict regulations of standardized testing, I have been able to grow as a writer on my literacy path. I have found that it is important to allow myself to make mistakes and except those mistakes as part of the writing process. My literacy path has been an eventful time full of many lessons.