Mathavan 1

Gokull Mathavan
Miss. Eaker
UWRT 1101-018
07 December 2014
A Personal Literacy Narrative
Its that time of year again. In four hours it will be Wednesday, April 15th, the day after
taxes are due. You sit down in the laundry room with the laptop on the washing machine and you
turn to your significant other, or in my case my pet cat Pop-Tart, and wonder what the hell
happened. You knew this day would come as it does every year and you did everything you
needed to. You went to Home Depot and bought the energy efficient this and the
environmentally friendly that. You even drove seven miles back to the goodwill to have your
donation receipt signed. Everything was set and you were not going to pay the $250 dollar
penalty that you did last year. However, there are only three hours left due to the mental
flashback you just had and all you have to show for it is your address and your social security
number entered into turbo-tax. This is when it comes to you, like the four-hundred ton freight
train that it is. This is just like writing papers.
You spend countless hours preparing yourself by researching and planning but it always
ends up you sitting in front of a blank word doc two hours before the final draft is due
questioning whether a ten point deduction will affect your grade to badly. However, after
completing the assignment, you have this feeling of accomplishment, a feeling that is only
supported by the joy of receiving that hard earned A. Taxes are the same way. You waste

Mathavan 2
countless days of the year keeping track of every purchase made and question if its really worth
it. Then you are relieved when you actually make money out of the whole thing.

Lets begin in grade school. The days were sunny and warm and no one knew what
moodle or SmartWork was nor did we care. All we did was wake up, take the bus, eat our snack,
play kickball, and finally go home to do it all over the next day. The only important thing was
what flavor Capri-Sun Jordan had and why I didnt have it. There were only two things to learn,
math and English. The times tables werent bad and neither was long division. English was
smooth sailing. It was right after snack time, our stomachs full of goldfish and Scooby-Snacks,
which we sat in a large, tribunal circle, and listened to Charlottes Web and Matilda. The teacher,
Mrs. Reiner, would speak with such gusto and flavor that all we had to do was sit down and let
the movies play in our head. It was around the fourth grade that it began to change. I remember
Mrs. Bivens handing out a pink, poorly copied paper of approved book series to read. I was
panicked. I had barely read a book on my own; now they wanted me to read a whole series of
them. I remember talking to her after the bell rang; my mom carpooled in the afternoon, so I
didnt have to worry about missing the bus. She told me that the scholastic book fair was next
week and she would help me decide what to pick. The next week rolled around and my mom,
Mrs. Bivens, and I all walked around the parking lot sorting through the millions of books they
had. There was Clifford and The Bernstein Bears. However, one series caught my attention.
There was a box with trees and grass painted around it with what looked like the entrance of a
tree house on the front of the box. This was the Magic Tree House box set. There were about
thirty books of about sixty pages each. They were perfect. Mrs. Bivens said that every week I
was to read one book then write a summary of what happened. Then, on Fridays, we would get

Mathavan 3
into small groups and talk about the stories we read. This procedure worked flawlessly until
about the last seven weeks of school. I had just finished my last book of the series. I didnt know
what I was going to do. It was Thursday and I had to write about something. So my ten year old
self winged it. I just made up a story about the main characters, Jack and Annie, and some
adventure they went on. Making up the title of the stories werent hard either. It was always
something at someplace. I believe the title of mine was Chimpanzees of the Congo. My plan
worked perfectly. The summary was just how I thought the book would go if it was real. The
reading groups were a breeze the next day. My fellow students knew I only read the magic tree
house and my story fit the format perfectly. I did this until the end of the school year. This was
one of my favorite literacy experiences in grade school. I enjoyed it because I was given free
range in what I could do. I had no restrictions and it only had to seem believable. This is one of
the positive feelings from writing. They dont happen very often for me, but when they do, they
feel great.
Later on, during my schooling, we came across reading logs. These are the bane of my
grade school literacy existence. It was busy work given to students to see how well we complied
with government induced learning. Or at least, thats how it felt. Every week we just had to read.
No summary to make up. No story to tell. Not even a reflection. Just read. It was horrible. We
were supposed to read twenty minutes every day and then get our parents to sign our reading log.
Then, every Monday, we would get our Monday folders. They contained the work we did,
graded and all, and a sheet stating if we completed everything or not that our parents had to sign.
For the first couple months, I complied. I would read a popular science article every night and
get my mom to sign it. After those long two months I thought, Screw this. I just stopped doing
them. I remember telling my mom that the reading logs were only for the first quarter and now

Mathavan 4
we had in class reading. She believed me. Every Monday the sheet would have a red frowning
face and a note saying that my teacher wanted a meeting with my mom. I would throw the paper
away. I cared so little about reading (and also I was lazy) that is was willing to fail the 5th grade
because my Monday folder was not being signed. It was not that I didnt like reading. Reading is
fine. I didnt like reading without a purpose. Then one day, the hammer fell. My mom normally
picks me up from school. However, today I saw our car in the parking lot at lunch time. I come
back from lunch and my mom just finished up a parent teacher meeting. My life was over. I
knew exactly what they were talking about and I knew the consequences. My mom was furious
that I was hiding the notes that the teacher was sending her. She was not as mad about not
reading though. She knew that the reading was boring for me and we had talked about how I
needed to read more. It even so happened that later on in the school year that she would allow me
to sign my reading log on her behalf.
Finally, my last reason for hating writing. The SAT. Up until the 9th grade I had no idea
what college I wanted to attend. I didnt even know what any college had to offer. UNC,
NCSU,ECU,Duke. They were all sports teams. They carried no meaning other than basketball,
and football. Then all of a sudden I had to choose where I wanted to go. That isnt even the hard
part. Getting in is a real pain in the ass. Getting good grades was not that much of an issue. It was
the SAT. At the time I had a general tutor who would help me prepare for tests and AP exams.
Then at the beginning of the 10th grade all we did was SAT practice. My math skills were fine, so
all I worked on was reading and writing. Every week I would complete the reading and writing
portions of the test and then sit with the tutor and figure out why I got the questions wrong. After
a few months the reading portion was not too difficult. There are only a few questions to ask in a
reading passage and most of it is vocab. Writing, however, is a different story. We were asked

Mathavan 5
useless questions such as which part of the sentence is incorrect. Sometimes the sentence is
correct to begin with, but because it used passive voice it was wrong. The worst part was the
essay. You are given twenty-five minutes to write your opinion about something you didnt give
two hoots about. No planning, no thinking, just pump out words. I would spend every Saturday
afternoon pumping out meaningless essays to gain practice for the SAT. It was a complete waste
of time. After two whole years of writing essays and taking the SAT three times, the highest
score I received for the writing portion was a 550. The first time I took it was a couple years
earlier and I scored a 510. Two whole years wasted to gain 40 points. What a waste of time. I
dont understand how my writing abilities can be judged by a five paragraph essay I wrote in
twenty-five minutes that I have no interest in. I even hear now that the Collegeboard is thinking
of dropping the writing portion all together. Just my luck.
As you can see, my personal literacy experiences have varied throughout my K-12 career.
There were times of brilliance and time of manic depression; sometimes in the same day. I have
had mixed feelings about the whole thing in general and it is safe to say that my opinion is not
going to change that much. Going back to writing papers, I am currently writing this paper at
11:25pm on December 7th. Things never change for me. Oh well, I guess that is what grade
replacement is for.