Chantal, Kinesiology Major, from Tumwater, WA
While attending Western Washington University, I plan to major in Kinesiology with a pre-physical therapy interest. All my life I never used to consider myself a writer, but over this quarter I have learned a lot about myself and my writing skills, or lack thereof, and it turns out that I enjoy it more than I thought I did. I think it is really important for literacy (in all forms) to be enjoyable and engaging. I also believe that from each embodiment of literacy, we should gain more knowledge and take something away from it that we did not have before that encounter. Although it is not my passion, this quarter I have found that writing is something that has the ability to flow pretty smoothly for me. Throughout high school I would alway struggle with finding the motivation to write something. I would always just have to force myself to get to the word count I needed or reach the page number. Now I have learned a lot more about my own writing strategies, my personal strengths, and most importantly how to overcome my weaknesses that tend to hold me back. The hardest thing for me when it comes to writing is finding that inspiration at the beginning of a paper before anything is written down. I find it so hard to start an essay or a story because I never know where to begin. As soon as the inspiration and ideas finally come to me, it is as if I have unlocked this flow of thoughts in my brain and suddenly everything comes pouring out. I know now that once I am able to release my thoughts, my writing becomes much smoother.
For our first project this quarter, we had to choose a personal experience that has helped shape our literacy. I had a lot of trouble trying to think of a story to tell. At first I only thought of literacy as reading a book or writing something, so I could not think of any experience relating specifically to those topics. Realizing I was not getting anywhere, I decided to simply Google search “forms of literacy”. I discovered that there was much more to it than reading and writing, like communication, problem solving, and knowledge for example. These, I could definitely write about. Two years ago, I had a very traumatic experience from a skiing accident and I knew that I would really love to share my story with people. The moment that I figured out the topic I was going to write my literacy narrative on, the words just started flowing onto the page and I swear I had never typed faster (I am a slow typer… but not in this moment). Before I knew it, I was already well over the word limit and I still had so much more I wanted to say. I explained every thought that went through my head during my accident right down to each specific detail, like when the “panic began to hit me” as I thought I would never escape from under the trees and when I thought that “this is where I die” because I had not seen another person come down that trail. Some of the details I wrote brought back vivid memories and flashbacks without me even realizing that would happen. When I mentioned that “I heard ringing in my head and my body hurt everywhere”, I literally thought back to the moment (two whole years ago) and I could distinctly remember the pain in my body and the confusion in my head. I believe that by including my inner thoughts, the readers can really feel how I felt in the moment and put themselves in my situation. The biggest thing for me is that when I find something I am really interested in writing about, it is not hard to really get into it. This essay was one that I actually really enjoyed writing and considering I always hated writing essays in my past English classes, this was a big milestone for me. I think one of the most important lessons I have learned about my own personal literacy growth would be that no matter what the assignment is, if I can find a way to make it interesting and appealing to me, then it will make the whole writing process much easier and more enjoyable. My writing throughout the rest of the quarter was no longer the burden previous writing used to be for me. I will admit, it was not always the most enjoyable, but I never disliked it and it was never very challenging for me.
My partner, Kiara, and I decided to do our research project on the differences in preferences between reading an electronic book for fun and reading a printed book for fun. We wanted to keep our website very simple and easy to read and navigate, while being a little bit cute, of course.
*Below I thought I would add a photo of my battle scar from the accident.
