Julia Martinez: Back at it again

In order to more completely understand where a writer is coming from, I have found that it is often helpful to know a little about them. So, some background on me. My name is Julia Martinez, I am the oldest of three children, so I am the first of my siblings to go to college. I grew up in Modesto, California, and have lived there my whole life. Modesto is in the central valley, so smack dab middle  of California. I think it is the type of place too big to be considered a town, but too small to be just a city. Unlike the majority of people, I loved high school. This is what inspired me to become an english education major, and eventually I hope to become a high school english teacher.

I haven’t put too much thought into my literacy practices, but reading Szwed’s article really got me thinking. Our society has become pretty consumed with technology and all that encompasses it. I am no exception to that; I wake up, and the first thing that I reach for is my phone. I check my text messages, my social medias (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat), and read my emails. Growing up, reading was always my escape; however, the older I have gotten, I seem to have less and less time to read for pleasure. But then again, I have always said “you make time for things that are important to you.” A lot of the reading and writing that I do, especially for school, is academic. Unfortunately, academic reading and writing definitely doesn’t usually go with a stigma of pleasure. I think that my literacy practices reflect a lot of the people in today’s world, which I can admit is pretty pathetic.

The purpose of reading and writing seems to be to get a point across to the reader. We read and write in order to relay information, not necessarily to enrich the reader. In such a busy society, who has time for that, right? Writing has always been something that comes easy for me. I love being able to reread things that I have written and have absolutely no idea where it came from. So for me, writing is somewhat therapeutic. However, a lot of the reading I do is for pleasure and mindless (such as social media or posting from there), or in order to complete some sort of assignment.

Reading the article left me with several questions about both society as a whole, and myself. How did I so easily stray away from a practice such as reading that I once loved, without notice? Why do we put so little emphasis on the importance of literacy? I am excited to have these questions hopefully be answered throughout the next semester.