Daria Al-Khalidi

Grant
UWRT 1103
3 September 2014
From comics to compelling historical novels, Dr.Seuss to Leo Tolstoy, reading
and writing has shaped my outlook on life, my personality, my literacy, and my behavior.
Ive learned more in life from reading than I have from personal experiences. Reading
gives me another point of view to consider in life rather than personal experiences. I
always had the potential to become a great reader and writer; I just lacked the motivation
and courage. My three role models: my mom, my dad and an older friend named Mrs.
Claire, helped me discover my potential and my love for reading.
I never had the courage to search for books in the library by myself. I always felt
like I would lose some sort of life game by choosing a bad novel. A bad novel did not
have a terrible plot, story line or character development; a bad novel was a novel that
negatively affected my outlook on life. Reading and digesting a bad novel was worse
than an allergic reaction. A bad novel is the equivalent to a lifetime worth of experiences
that dont offer any guidance. At the age of eight, parental guidance was what I solely
relied on for finding novels, except, I didnt use the computer databases for guidance, I
used my human resources. My mother was the first person to help me break out of my
literary shell by helping me pick out comics and short novels. Each week she would
guide me through the aisles of the library to help me find a new book. She would read the
summaries on the back of book covers to see if they would fit my developing
individuality. I know we had always been taught to never judge a book by its cover, but

that was exactly what we were doing. My mom judged me based off of all of the years
spent raising me, but we judged books by short summaries. It was like speed dating, we
would quickly read the books summary and then move onto the next one. Through this
process I most likely eliminated a lot of truly bad novels, but I also ignorantly ignored
some good novels with bad summaries. Each book I read shaped my growing personality,
behavior, and literacy.
My mother continued helping me on my literacy journey well into my high
school years. My mother shaped and decided how my literacy journey would begin by
selecting the books that she believed would best fit me. However, each year she was
expecting me to become more independent about finding novels fit for me. The methods
of finding books at age eight with my mom had drastically changed by the time I got to
high school. At this point in my life, my mom considered me an individual. In the ninth
grade I also considered myself an individual in reading choice, but I began to strongly
lack the motivation and time to pick up a book. I was missing the guidance in my life that
was given to me by my mother, without her input in book selection I had no motivation. I
was lost until I realized that I always follow my mothers footsteps by reading the
hundreds of novels she kept on display in the living room. The list was endless, from
Genghis Kahn to War and Peace; from religious books to historic novels. I decided that I
would start with the book that my mother talked about the most, War and Peace by Leo
Tolstoy. I started reading the book without my mom knowing. Within 2 weeks I read the
book, not understanding some parts of it, but understanding its message as a whole.
While reading the book I couldnt help but think about my mother the whole time. From
War and Peace I moved on to other novels that discussed the infrastructure of Europe

during different time periods. My moms Polish background had greatly influenced her
book decisions, so much so that most of her books were by European authors. I began to
explore my culture and learned so much from the novels about Europe. I actually felt
connected to my culture and ethnicity after I began to read about it. My ignorance on my
own ethnicity and culture had thwarted my literacy journey all these years, and I never
realized it before. Once I read those novels I changed my perspective on life and my
individuality. My moms guiding hand carried me when I was eight through the library,
and led me to discover the most important form of literacy: literacy of ones own culture.
In my eyes, I am half individual, half my mother because of the selections of books she
made for me as a child.
In high school while I was still learning about my Polish heritage, I also began to
venture to the sciences. My interest sprung from my new interest in the medical field
while learning about my open-heart surgery procedure. My interest in science was fueled
even further by a good family friend, Mrs. Claire. She introduced me to books about
general medicine and about famous scientists such as Einstein. She knew of my recently
sprung interest in the medical and scientific fields and knew it was important that I read a
lot about it, so I could get a better understanding for the subjects. She bought books for
me about the field and would bring a new one for me each month. Over the course of a
few months I read six books that she had bought just for me. Mrs. Claire wanted me to
experience the medical field through books before I would have to experience it in real
life. The books that Mrs. Claire bought for me only furthered my interest in the medical
field. By the end of each book I was already dreaming years into the future with a career
of medicine. I was determined to change my undecided major to a medical or science

related major and prepare myself for the competitiveness of the medical field. If it were
not for Mrs. Claire, I would not have discovered my medical passion. The reading of
those books helped me to become more fluent in medical literacy and advance to a place I
never thought I would be in life.
My father never read books. For him literacy was statistical literacy, not reading
novels and poems. My father is the complete polar opposite of my mom and I. My mom
carefully guided me through my crucial first years by helping me chose books based off
of what she believed would fit me best, as an individual. My mother never guided me
towards the math section of the bookstore because she was never a math person herself.
Even though my mom always said she was choosing the books that fit me the best, she
never chose math because it never fit her. I was thwarted in my mathematical literacy due
to my moms extreme preference of literature over mathematics. My initial learning of
literacy in novels was what created the foundation and liking of reading and literature for
me. It wasnt until middle school when my father finally introduced me to mathematical
algebraic concepts. At the time, I was in the seventh grade and I was struggling in prealgebra. I felt belittled and diminished because of my lack of literacy in mathematics.
While most students were making Bs, I was making Cs. My father always got enraged
whenever he saw my math report card. He almost took it as an insult that I didnt inherit
his innate math abilities. My father holds math at a high pedestal while reading and
literature is far below it; to him math was his savior from his home country, Iraq, which
was in shambles at the time he left. Being literate in math was my dads only way to
escape from the rising turmoil in Iraq. For him, math was the ticket to the gateway. Being

literate in math came a lot harder to me than being literate in language and novels. I
needed the guidance and foundations for math just like how I needed them in literature.
My father, although impatient, began to work with me through my struggles that I
faced in math. He wanted so badly for me to not only understand mathematical literacy,
but to also enjoy it. I embraced math with open arms because I knew that math was the
reason that my father was in the US. Beforehand, I used to see math as just another class
that needed to be knocked out of the way. Regardless, my father spent countless hours
going over my missed questions on tests and review days in order to help me understand
the literacy that I initially couldnt understand at all. Throughout the years my math skills
enhanced with practice from my father, even better was that I actually found a type of
mathematical literacy that was appealing to me, geometry. My father opening up to me
about mathematical literacy made me become completely literate in some mathematical
subjects.
Over the years my literacy has developed. From mathematical literacy, to medical
literacy, to the love of literature, becoming literate in each one helped me develop into an
individual. I learned the importance of branching out my literacy skills by not only
limiting literacy to reading. I ventured outside of my comfort zone when I started reading
and now reading is my comfort zone. Without being literate in each I would never be a
Western culture novel fanatic, a lover of math, and a dreamer of medical school.