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Tanner Boles
Miss E.
UWRT 1103-018
23 September 2014
A Personal Literacy Narrative
Proper writing skills takes time to develop and its impossible to expect someone
to write decently without any sort of problems, help, or references. This belief is the
outcome of eighteen years of living, schooling, and learning. It takes a lot of effort and
assistance for one to come to a point where they are either comfortable with their
writing and it does not come easy. It usually takes failures or some sort of situation that
was not favorable for someone to see what it is they truly need. This is the case in my
education history. The act of writing went from something that was miserable to an
enjoyable way of letting things out through the pages of an essay.
The belief relates back to Elementary school when basic math skills and reading
were the most important things. Reading was always everyone else's favorite thing to
do and I always preferred the exact answers and writing out numbers. I was never really
fast at writing and the writing I did complete always seemed to be lacking when
compared to other students. The assignments that were graded and presented in front
of class as the better ones were always my friends papers and I seemed to always be
the only one that did not obtain this sort of glory.
This sort of incident occurred up until the fifth grade where I first realized I had
writing potential but ignored it because of past incidents and was still way better at and
more entertained by other subjects. This essay was the DARE essay about drug

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prevention. This assignment was one of the largest of the fifth grade and I needed to do
well on it to have all As. I spent hours completing the assignment and remember the
anxiety when the principal of the school began to read the top papers of the year. The
excitement that came to me when I heard the beginning of my paper sent an instant jolt
down my body and I was extremely happy to hear my name called out in the end to
receive one of the few DARE essay awards. Both of my parents attended the event and
there was an instant emotion of pride in how hard I worked and how it finally came
through.
Although this award felt like a major feat and made me extremely happy to
receive, I still continued to struggle through some of the assignments in English classes
during middle school. This slowly came to show as report cards came back and I
continually did worse in English classes when compared to others. This continued
throughout most of middle school but one of the key things that showed growth in my
writing during this time came from something called a D.A.R. essay. This was required
yearly, and, like in elementary school, I was usually not one of the kids to be chosen to
win the DAR essay selection. My competitive spirit always caused me to work extremely
hard on the paper but my writing never reached the same level as other students in my
grade. This happened in both sixth and seventh grade where I wrote the paper but
received no benefits from putting in the hard work. This repetitive occurrence finally
broke in the eighth grade after the D.A.R. essays had been judged. I was finally picked
to win the essay and this was the first of the three I had to write. This really excited me
even though it was not much of an award to receive but it resembled a moment when
perseverance finally came to show. Through this second event of accomplishment, I

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realized how greatly my writing was improving year by year and that I could perhaps be
just as good a writer as the students I always thought were better.
These two events did show improvement, but yet again, as high school had just
begun, I was back at the bottom when it came to English and writing classes but this all
changed by my Junior and Senior Year. In these two years, I took an IB English course
that lasted for the two year time span. The teacher made the class very entertaining and
throughout the course, my writing drastically improved as I learned proper ways to write
and was capable of interpreting new pieces of writing very easily. The most important
aspect that came from this class was definitely the confidence and support of the
teacher. He was very good at explaining what was wrong with work and exceptionally
good at pointing at good points of writing, in fact, he focused more on the positives than
the negatives. I remember him specifically pulling me aside after class to talk about one
of my writings and my work ethic. He began by telling of how the last writing assignment
was very well written and this formed into a new conversation that boosted my
confidence to a new level and one of the most important reasons why I try to make
writing very clear and proper now. He told of how he and a teacher began discussing
me the day before and about how intelligent they believed I was without looking at only
grades. He saw the potential I had and wanted this to be brought out in writing because,
up to that point, I never put complete and full effort into all of my writing since it was my
weaker subject. This event changed the way writing was looked at in my life forever. \
Nowadays I take writing to a whole new level and try my best to transfer the
ideas within my mind to the ones that read my writing assignments whether this be
teachers or students. This dedication formed in elementary school with the D.A.R

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essay, middle school with the D.A.R.E. essay, and, most importantly, the IB English
course taken in high school. All of these events showed me that I was capable of
performing at the same level as the ones who were known as excellent writers. This
was only possible from struggles in my writing performance, dedication to succeeding in
the writing department of courses, and from the assistance of teachers that gave me the
confidence to perform at such a level. This is my profound belief on what it takes to
become a good writer when one is not strictly born with the ability and is a key
component that helps develop my writing motivation.