The Process of my Literate education by Zeth Martinez

I was once labeled a low level reader and now I can proudly boast that I’ve finished War and Peace, so the question is where do the lines cross? When I was young I found the whole process of reading to be tedious and boring now it happens to be one of my favorite pastimes. What changed for me is my mentality for reading. Even at a young age I found it hard to accept a teachers assigned reading; when I was forced to read a book the whole book became spoiled for me. It wasn’t until I started writing that I actually gave reading another look. So perhaps starting with writing would be the safest focus point.

As a young boy I had the pleasure, and in some ways disadvantage, of a mother who found no faults in her child. I would often spend my childhood in the company of the ever narcissistic and egotistical me, making up grand adventures and unique stories to pass the time. I would have a whole reason for a game and when I played with others their character had to fit my world. There came a point when my mother told me to write these stories down as never to forget them. Filled with a narcissism that is only acceptable with small children, I sought my path as a young writer. It was only when I began to enjoy the art that I thought it would be best to look at the product of professionals and while teachers of all grades would assign academic reading it wasn’t that genre that interested me, it was simply fantasy. So a splurged on my selected genre and soon grew to love everything about it.

Now I will never claim to be a great writer, no doubt this post is riddled with grammatical sins, but I will claim to be a great reader. A single book read in my process has yet to be forgotten. I read slowly and in shifts of sudden zeal but the result is always the same, I can recall most, if not all, of the information I read, something I still cannot accomplish with a mandatory text. This is partially because any given reading assignment has a deadline, forcing the reader to read the text quickly as to avoid hitting that deadline. What I’ve learned from my assigned reading habits is one of two things: a) I finish the novel as quickly as possible and risk the process of retaining that information, or b) I wait until the final moment and either barely finish or do not finish at all. Both of these processes are terribly inefficient and though I value efficiency and education I find it next to impossible to break these habits. Through reading what I like I slowly built myself as a reader and willingly sought to expand my reading skills. That is why I find this class fascinating, the opportunity to expand on what it means to be literate from someone who was once considered below average at best.