Burcu Tuzcu

Professor Ferrara

English 101

21 September 2020

Literacy Narrative Full Draft

Scheduling an appointment with my advisor and selecting my first-year classes for

college was a big thing for me since that meant that I will be starting college soon. My sister was

constantly shouting and reminding me to email an advisor at Gateway so I can talk to them about

what classes I would have to take in order to be involved in the nursing program. Having

something on my schedule would make me start school. I did it. My first email with a staff at

college. He emailed me the time and date for us to talk which was a week later on a Monday

someday in July. Yes, I know some people have their classes picked out way earlier than that,

but I was just procrastinating and just enjoying my summer before getting into the adult world.

The day finally comes, I’m in my room sweating, waiting for a call from him. I was texting my

sister nervously saying it’s been 15 minutes and he still hasn’t called. She was telling me he’s

probably busy and obviously didn’t forget about me which made me feel a little better since I

was on the erg of crying. I get a call from an unknown number and I opened it and he start to say

hello blah blah and he shows me how to use blackboard and important things like checking my

grades etc. Then we get to the point where he asks me if I am currently employed or not because

some students can’t really handle classes along with a job. I don’t work so he said four classes

would be perfect and that according to me wanting to major in nursing that I would have to take
biology, phycology, sociology and other health and sciences classes like that. So, after an hour

and a half of choosing my courses over the semester it was time for me to say bye and to thank

him so much for his help. Before he closed the phone he wanted to see if he was pronouncing my

name correctly and then asked me where I’m from since my name doesn’t seem like a name he

would see often so I told him that I am Turkish and he went out saying that he loves Turkish

food and he always goes to the Turkish restaurant in west haven. That made me smile, he was

such a nice helpful advisor and would love to become close with him.

After that was done, I felt frightened on what is going to happen next such as would I

start buying my textbooks for the class at the moment or wait till my classes started. Or who my

professors were going to be, and would they be nice and helpful. I heard about (rate my

professor) before but never used it clearly since I didn’t attend college before, but I tried it and

entered all my professors name one by one. There were a couple of unpleasant comments written

on their wall saying how unprofessional and not caring of a person they were. You can also see

what other schools they taught, and their overall quality based on however much ratings the

students wrote on their wall. This was really the beginning of my dream, to go to college and to

pursue a higher education and hopefully be able to follow the footsteps of being a nurse. I had so

many emotions at the moment. The first day of online classes at Gateway Community College

was on August 26th, 2020. Even though it was all online and I couldn’t really meet any of my

professors and classmates it was still my first year of my freshman year at college.

The night before classes began, I was pretty nervous. I did a couple of things to be ready

for the next day. I printed out my schedule and hanged it on my calendar across my room for me
to not be able to forget my meetings times and my professors name. I am currently taking four

classes and at that time I didn’t know if it was going to be a lot for me to handle. I tried to sleep

early so I can wake up energized and feeling good but that obviously didn’t work out, I was too

nervous. I put on a couple of alarms on my phone to wake me up around 10 am for my first class

which was psychology and then I had the two English classes after that. But before I talk about

how the first day went and what I did, I forgot to mention that when I talked to my advisor back

in July, we picked a class together which was this other English class and it wasn’t online. I

actually had to go to school, and it was from like three thirty to five thirty.

The primary location was my small comfortable bedroom on my laptop. I closed my eyes and

imagined this place. I let myself believe that a successful career I’ve been dreaming about will

eventually come. Sitting on comfortable red chair in my room with my laptop on my desk

reminded me of the first day and me just having the WebEx logo shown on my screen and my

heart was beating from nervousness. I pressed down lightly on my smooth trackpad with while

trying to access the assignments on blackboard and recalled the fresh bread that came out the

oven that early morning for us to eat with the breakfast. The birds were chirping extremely loud

that day as long as I can remember. But overall, my first day of virtual classes went pretty good

woke up early did my makeup to look presentable and tried not to be so anxious. My classmates

I didn’t really recognize since they are probably from all over Connecticut and not just new

haven where I went to high school. My professors are in fact very sweet and kind, love them all.

They are honestly so chill and friendly; they actually care about you and your grades and will

help you if you need help with anything. I established the setting and scene because I wrote

about the first day of school, but this was not a traditional morning routine of what I would’ve
normally did if I had to actually go to school. So, my setting didn’t constant like starting the car,

getting my bookbag ready, but rather the scene was set up like me managing my own time, and

finding a clear spot to go on my meeting to start class. My sister Busra, knocked on my door and

came inside my room asking how the meeting went and chatted with me for a while about what

we went through and if I needed help with anything about school. She suggested that, “if you

need help with anything Burcu ask me, I’ll always be there even though I will also be busy with

school.” I said “I will don’t worry; I can figure this out by myself” grumbly talking about the

websites that were new to me. Which made me feel guilty because she knew I was struggling

with all this new material for college.

Our class and professor talked about what we’re going to be learning and how to access

grades and our assignments on blackboard which I highly needed since I was pretty puzzled

about that. Along with that most of my teachers showed us how to use Outlook and CommNet,

talked about the supplies we need for that class, and the required textbook we needed to get in

order to be successful in that class. Basically, how grading works in that class and like how

exams are going to be like since its online. Basic stuff like that we kind of chatted about until our

meeting was over, and I felt a huge relief fall of my shoulders. I have been waiting for this day to

come since like around May 2020. I regularly checked my fall syllabus even before school

started to see if I needed any clarification done on any topics. I think I got my required textbooks

and like ALEKS which is like a math website where we do math examples and get graded on

that two weeks after online classes started just to see if I was going to change any more classes.

Well that was an overall of my first day of online classes which brought me anxiety but honestly
it wasn’t that bad at all. I was just exaggerating about how hard and long the meeting was going

to be.

I have quite of bit of personal skills such as responsibility, motivation, and the most

important is confidence! My ability to communicate well is acceptable along with teamwork,

which I think these are needed the most during college, and that is what I have learned in the past

30 days. I got innumerable amount of emails that Gateway sends per week saying like if you

need a tutor come here or things like that well, I decided that I need my school id since I didn’t

apply for it yet along with a Upass if I wanted to go somewhere with a train or bus. They still

didn’t send me an email saying that I need to go to Gateway and pick up my student id and I

have no idea why, but I can assure that it’s because of the picture I have submitted during the

application. You’re supposed to submit an actual picture and not a selfie which I did because

why not, and the background is not supposed to have any other people behind it. I don’t really

have nice professional pictures like that of me that I can use for an id and couldn’t take one, so I

just submitted in a selfie I took like a month ago which was pretty recent to me to be honest.

This is my personal literacy narrative that I will enjoy discussing about to other people. I

began to explore taking a snapshot and extending it into a pretty long fascinating narrative. I

showed you guys my personalized story of my relationship with school. I discussed the

memories I lived through to be able to come to this day. I mentioned what happened that day and

described the details of the story so you can have a clear understanding of my first day of online

classes in college. Also, many literacy narratives wrote and published personal literacy narrative

many times before to help their audience get to know them a little better. A literacy narrative is a
story about their own experiences. Such as, your knowledge on a particular subject or topic of

your choosing, whether it can be like sports or even learning a new language.