Last semester, I took a rhetoric class, having no idea what rhetoric was. One of the essay topics was “What is rhetoric? What do you think it is?” and I found myself thinking “What isn’t rhetoric?” That same feeling came to me again during this semester.

I learned that literacy takes form in what a yearbook means to middle schoolers and the fact that, although yearbooks are meant to bring together the class and school, they actually alienate certain groups and individuals. Signing of yearbooks is a rite of passage in middle school and how many signatures you have in yours reflects how cool you are. Similarly, if you have no year book, it becomes obvious very quickly that your family could not afford the fee. This comes into play when teacher a lot 10 minutes or so at the end of class for specifically yearbook signing. It alienates those who may not have any friends in the class or have no yearbook at all. They can’t take part in this activity. Somehow, I had always known what a yearbook means in middle school, but it took this class for me to put it into words.

I learned that literacy is found in the music, movies, and books we choose to read. In my article group, one of the main ideas we focused on is the looking-glass self. This is the idea that the identity we take on and portray to the world and how we begin to see ourselves is what we think others see us as. That’s why it’s so rare that you see a long, detailed “About Me” page on Facebook or, gasp, Myspace. It asks us to describe ourselves as we see ourselves, rather than how others see us, and that’s hard for many of us to do.

I find myself having to look through my classmates’ reflections for ideas about what to say in my own. I know I learned stuff this semester, as I do every semester, and I know I’ll be applying what I’ve learned to my future as a teacher, but it’s still hard to write down, as Steven said, “I learned this and this and this and that”. It also doesn’t help that I had Kim for two classes in the same room. I almost type something and then think, “No, wait, that was the other class.” For example, I could write a few paragraphs (or more!) on just EPIC, but wrong class!

So, anyway, what is literacy? What isn’t literacy? We’ve come to learn that basically everything we see, read, make, etc. is literacy. It doesn’t just have to do with reading books, but a plethora of other mediums. Literacy is around us all the time and we’re constantly engaging in it and manipulating it for our own needs.

I’ll be honest, I signed up for this class because I was told I needed to in order to sign up for the Internship in English. I ended up deciding to sign up for the internship next semester, but stayed in this class. I wasn’t entirely sure what the class had in store for me, but I’m glad I stayed.

Having two classes in the same classroom with the same teacher at the same table makes it difficult sometimes to separate what we learned in one class with what we talked about in another. Many times, the principles can be applied to both subjects. Literacy is one of those things.

We as a generation are reading more than any other generation previously simply because we have so many ways to. Social media, texting, and commercials are all examples of literacy that no one had dreamed of one hundred years ago, yet they are all ingrained in our culture today. If you are a journalist, but are unable to use Twitter, you are seriously lacking in your skillset. Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr are the main ways people find out about what’s happening in the world. Someone can hear within minutes that there was a natural disaster in China, rather than having to wait until the next day (or never) with traditional news sources.

Literacy to me has always meant what I’m pretty sure it meant to most of my classmates before this semester. It meant being able to read. However, that isn’t entirely true.

Since starting the class, that definition has changed drastically. Literacy is not only happening when you’re able to read books, but also when you watch an advertisement on TV and use the computer. It’s using Siri on your smartphone and it’s using Twitter to connect with the world (#twitteracy).

Reading through Keri Franklin’s initial reaction to Twitter gave me a strong sense of deja vu. Like her, I created an account and pretty much sent a few tweets into the void. I knew the basics, but it didn’t really interest me, despite the fact that I knew that it would become “more fun” once I was interacting with people. Well, I didn’t care. I had Facebook and that was good enough for me. Recently, however, the prevalence of Twitter in American culture makes me mildly curious about what I’m missing. Occasionally, I’ll go on to look around, but that’s about it.

The difference between Franklin and I is sponsorship. While I said, “I don’t get it” and moved on, she went to others and asked questions which eventually allowed her to get more out of the website than I ever have. Digital sponsorship is just as real and important as print sponsorship. When we are younger, we are read to and eventually ask questions to our parents, family, and teachers if we don’t understand something. Although digital literacy happens later (although that is changing as the years go on), the basics are the same. We are exposed to something, be it Twitter, Prezzy, or something else which sparks an interest, and then we ask questions to our peers or Google. The medium may change, but the sponsorship doesn’t.

I interviewed my mom, who has always been a big literacy sponsor for me. Education is a huge part of our family. Apparently my great-great grandparents on my mom’s side were college graduates, so I’m a fifth-generation college student. This isn’t surprising considering the fact that it was never a question of “if” I go to college, but rather “when” I go to college. One of the questions that I asked my mom that stuck out to me was about computer literacy. Computers and technology are such a huge part of our life now that it’s hard for me to imagine life without it. Writing a paper without Google? Inconceivable! At one point, my mom talked about how she essentially used a computer she had access to in college as a fancy typewriter. She wrote out her essays by hand and used the computer to type, print, and save the final draft.

My excerpt:

In contrast to the emphasis that was put on computer literacy in my elementary school (I distinctly remember a typing class in fifth grade), there wasn’t that kind of literacy in my mom’s education – simply because they weren’t around! The first computer she saw was a PC her Geometry teacher had in high school, but she didn’t get to use a computer until college when her friend let her use one. Even then, she says, it was still common to write with a typewriter. This PC was on loan from the friend’s brother-in-law who was, as my mom describes, “an early computer geek”. Her friend kept a sticky note on the edge of the screen with instructions for all the function keys and how to print, etc. While students today generally type everything (including notes, drafts, etc.) on their computer, my mom says she usually used it as a fancy typewriter. All of her first and second drafts were handwritten and then she’d use the computer to print and save the final draft.