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Toni Johnson

Professor J. Relerford

English 104

6 September 2016

Escape

Ive always loved small spaces. The lack of excess inside of them made them perfect for

reading. No distractions meant I could read more in less time. They were all over my house: the

back of my moms closet behind the jeans and shoe boxes, under my fathers work table, and my

favorite, a little square of carpet between two couches and a wall. I would crawl underneath the

curving arms of the couches into the crux of the room next to a fake plant and wile away the

hours reading. When the sun began to set, the light from the lone window would hit my corner so

perfectly Id never want to leave. Reading was my escape. I could let my overactive imagination

run wild and my curiosity roam free. I learned to read younger than most, and it was like

someone had told me the secrets of the universe. By the time I was in fifth grade I was reading at

a 12th grade level. I read anything and everything I could get my hands on. I loved fiction more

than nonfiction but wouldnt discriminate, picture books were great but soon became boring. I

went through a Stephen King phase, I read Through the Looking Glass over and over, I poured

myself into fantasy/ adventure novels and of course I read the fluffy slice-of-life girl books that

tended to circulate in middle school girl social groups. Reading shaped me as a person, it made

me free and creative, because anything is possible in books.

Reading became my main source of literacy because of my curiosity for the world around

me. I was born curious. From the time I could walk to just a few years ago I would get lost in
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stores because I would simply wander away silently to look at something that had caught my

eye. This was a direct relationship to my approach to reading. I read whatever looked interesting

-which was almost everything. In my mind I couldve spent my entire life there in my corner

reading. In class, when reading about Malcolm X in prison I identified with him when I read this

quote. I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiositybecause you can

hardly mention anything Im not curious about. (Malcom X: The Autobiography) This

unrelenting curiosity is something Ive lived my entire life. Ive thought this very same thing to

myself on multiple occasions and it was amazing to see it written out in a classroom text as it

was.

As I got older I began to want to write my own stories --as most avid readers do. I started

with poetry and slowly moved into short stories and even attempted to write a novel at one point.

I would put my ideas and fragments of story into a small notebook I kept with me between 9th

and 11th grade. I had thousands of ideas but no way to move them together to form a cohesive

and coherent story. I would get a good group of characters and figure out their relationships but

when it was time to put those relationships into words I always fell short of what I was

attempting to convey. My writing style was and still is somewhat is abstract and odd. Lots of

words piled on top of each other and looped around in cliffhanger sentences, leaving the reader

increasingly confused until all of a sudden everything snaps together. As Ta-Nehisi Coates said in

an interview about classes at MIT, The writing in your head may well be the sweetest music.

But when you put it on to the page what you will get will likely only be some vague, mushy

approximation). My mind was too muddled to put on paper effectively. Its because of this I

didnt pursue writing as my passion in life., though I did, and still do, love it. Instead, I pursued
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another strength and continued my appreciation of the literary arts in my own free time by

reading and listening to it whenever I can, and praising the people who are fantastic at creating it.

Without literacy I would not have been able to be on the path I am on today. As of right

now I am a biology major in the hopes of going to medical school and becoming a neurologist.

Reading helped me choose my professional goal of by opening me up to something I had no idea

I was good at. While reading, I was always able to predict how the characters felt and how they

would react to certain situations before they were said outright in the book. Because of this, I

also thought about the people around me as if life were a book and by doing that I was able to

deduce how they felt. I realized I am extremely adept at reading peoples emotions and true

personalities they try to hide underneath cynicism and meaningless words. At the time it just

seemed like a good social tool. I had never thought about how this could help me in a

professional sense. This was all just a thought in the back of my head as I wandered through high

school life trying to answer the over-arching question of What do I want to do with my life. It

wasnt until the summer of my junior year when I began to read more psychology books rather

than my normal fiction. I found that my skill of reading people was marketable in the act of

diagnosing mental illnesses and disorders. With mental problems behavior is over half over the

diagnosis. This train of thought eventually led to me wondering what happens in a brain to create

these types of problems within a persons brain. I was enamored with the idea that I would be

able to tell exactly what was going on in someones brain. Not even just to diagnose disorders

and illnesses but damage to the brains nerves that cause seizures and epilepsy. I wanted to see the

deterioration that caused Alzheimers and Dementia. Finding out that I could pull my wild

curiosity into a career was mind-blowing for me. I was overjoyed to have direction for the first

time in a while, and it had all been provided to me by my favorite pastime. Without books, and
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reading, writing, and literacy in general I dont think Id be here at Howard University writing

this paper.

Literacy has led me to all of my important life decisions so far: college major, future

career, and my over outlook on the world. A person can never improve if you dont consent to let

themselves step out into the world around them. My world was books and they pushed me to be

better in my reality. I am certain that I would be an entirely different person than I am now, if I

hadnt read as much as I did. Neurology is one of my lifes great loves and I was lead to this

because of the knowledge and realizations reading made me come to just by broadening my

horizons. Instead of dedicating my life to work that Im passionate about, I may have spent my

life lost in grease at McDonalds. Due to literacy and my unending curiosity guiding me; I am

now on a path Im excited about.

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Works Cited

Coates, Ta-Nehisi. "Notes From the First Year: Some Thoughts on Teaching at MIT."

The Atlantic. N.p., 11 June 2013. Web. 16 Sept. 2016.

X, Malcolm, and Alex Haley. "A Homemade Education." The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

New York: Ballantine, 1992. N. pag. Print.