The Overcast Summer
Other than snack and recess, there was only one thing I looked forward to in elementary school – the final bell. That bell meant more than just school ending to me, it meant freedom and independence, as I was finally free of the school’s confinement. I escaped the tedious homework and dreadful classes, which prohibited me from my ideal lifestyle. My ideal lifestyle did not require much, mainly consisting of playdates, video games, or sports. Summer was the perfect period for me, as I was able to focus on only these activities for the whole season. I would travel to Cape Cod and be free from any stress. It felt as if I was invincible to any academic demands or time-consuming tasks. Or so I thought. Then the infamous summer of fifth grade came around. At my safest time and place, school still found a way to encroach on my happiness by using a foreign concept known as summer reading.
The stress and discipline of the school year permeated my summer due to summer reading. I was perplexed that this idea of assigning school work over the summer was accepted by my district. What made it worse was the fact that I never read books in my free time. This caused summer reading to loom over me and be a constant nagging thought as I attempted to procrastinate it. My mom invented a method to end this procrastination by paying me for each book I read. It wasn’t enough to make me enjoy reading, however, as I would try to pretend I had read the book to reap the reward. I should have known better, as there was no fooling my mom. She would keep track of my reading by interrogating me on certain plot aspects or scenes. My dad added to this method by paying me five dollars every time I spotted a grammatical error. Retrospectively, my parents’ two implementations caused me to absorb the content in the books I read. As a kid, every dollar I earned did not go toward anything tangible, only virtual games. Having more money to spend on games was the true motivation I needed. The more books I read, the more in-game currency I earned. Each book seemed as if it was shorter than the last. I hurried and immediately powered my console as soon as the book closed. I picked up my controller, excited to play, but something strange began to happen. I would stare blankly at the console home screen, not knowing which game to select. My motivation for reading was gradually changing unconsciously. I became motivated to read each book not because of the money or video games, but rather the pleasure each book brought me. Select books would paint imaginary worlds similar to the worlds simulated in video games I played.
Before I knew it, I finished my assigned reading. But something felt off. I had grown an urge to keep immersing myself in the fictional universes created by the novels I read. I needed to fulfill this desire and decided to ask my dad for a book recommendation. After I asked, he smirked as if he had been waiting all eleven years for me to ask. He rummaged around his office until he pulled out an intriguing novel and handed it to me. I took a closer look and read the words, “Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief”. Ironically, this book appealed to me as I always judge a book based on its cover.
I remember first opening this novel on the porch as the sun glared down at me. I settled into the familiar, weathered Adirondack chair, facing the looming wooden giants standing over the lake. A sense of tranquility and ease consumed me as I opened the book for the first time. I also felt anticipation, curious to what my dad had recommended. The flipping of pages, distant humming of boats, and leaves rustling were the only sounds present. I looked up and the hue of the sky warmed and noticed the smell of food drifting out from the kitchen. I was so enveloped in the novel that I lost track of time. The novel captivated me as it revolved around a demigod embarking on various life-threatening quests. For the first time, it felt as if a movie was playing in my mind and I was there with Percy on his thrilling quests.
Not only did summer reading change my lifestyle during the summer, but it carried over into my daily life as well. I ended up ordering the rest of the Percy Jackson series and slowly replaced playing video games with reading books. I became more optimistic with school work, such as outside reading, where I chose books similar to Percy Jackson. The most important change summer reading implemented was causing me to become more amenable. It made me open to trying new things that I would have always avoided previously. I realized that broadening my perspective revealed enjoyable opportunities that I could integrate into my life, stemming from assigned reading.
Through this three part literacy narrative journey, I was exposed to new forms of expression when I created my own comic, which deepened my understanding of how impactful visual details are in telling a story or emotion. Going back to my first literacy narrative, I reflected on how perspective plays a big role in how a narrative is understood and felt. When making my comic, I realized that I expressed my academic journey much more authentically through small but intentional details. So when I went back to look at my first literacy narrative, I saw the divide between me explaining my reading and writing journey and expressing my genuine emotions and takeaways in that moment. Therefore, when I was writing this final literacy narrative, I maintained the goal of telling my reading and writing journey with the depth of my feelings and perspective at that time.
From birth till I was around 4 years old, my environment consisted of pure Spanish. At every corner you would hear it, whether it be conversations between my parents, neighbors, or family members, or even just the TV channels we would always tune into daily, everything was spoken and communicated in our native language. My sense and overall understanding of the world was shaped by the assumption that everyone else also only spoke Spanish. So it came as a great surprise to me when one day my older cousin came over to my house and began speaking this foreign, almost alien like, language she called English, shattering the bubble I hadn’t realized was around me all this time.
This exposure to the outside world opened a door to the world outside my house and predominantly Hispanic neighborhood, creating a sense of curiosity and eagerness to learn everything about this foreign land, starting with the language they spoke. Starting kindergarten a couple months later, I was finally able to enter the world of English speakers and learn how to speak just like them and my older cousin. This eagerness however, slowly disappeared as I went about my first day of school. Sitting at my desk, I remember looking around at my peers for the next year and noticing how rather odd they appeared. Unlike those in my neighborhood, they had rather lighter skin tones than me and were all communicating in English, with there being little to no words I could decipher. This continued throughout the day where I couldn’t understand anything my teachers said, let alone understand the content they were showing. While I sat in my seat not having said a word all day, all my other peers were already making friends and raising their hands to answer questions. I felt like an outsider who didn’t get the memo on having to know English prior to coming to this place.
After a few weeks of this, my parents and I knew something had to change, so instead of staying in that loop of confusion and stress, I decided to learn this English language by any means. My journey started by being placed in ESL classes, enrolling in afterschool tutoring, and working one on one with my parents at home. It was a back and forth battle of learning one thing and having to swiftly move onto the next thing, making English feel like this never ending blackhole of information. While at times it felt grueling and unrewarding, my eagerness to keep learning grew more and more as I slowly started seeing progress. I moved from only understanding small words to phrases to then being able to read and write full sentences. While these accomplishments weren’t met with much enthusiasm by my other peers and teachers, I felt a deep sense of pride knowing that despite starting off school on a bad footing, I was able to swiftly catch up to the current level of my peers. Using these newly formed skills and confidence in myself, I dove into my classes ready to put them to the test.
The rest of my time in elementary school and into middle and high school was spent growing my use of English in regard to reading and writing. With the mindset that I could learn anything if I truly put in the time and effort, I felt myself growing more and more. No longer was I facing challenges that carried the same level of stress and confusion as learning English, allowing my reading and writing skills to develop much more naturally compared to the beginning. I grew from being able to write small paragraphs and read simple chapter books to completing longer and more complex essays and finishing long novels without the same frustration I once had. While at times I did experience occasional challenges, the vast amount of help I got in the earliest years of my academic journey allowed me to expand my abilities rather smoothly.
The pattern of natural growth was disrupted when I entered my freshman seminar class. Before this class, my reading and writing skills focused on reading straightforward texts and writing traditional five paragraph essays, which hadn’t failed me until now. This class however, tested me in analyzing much more complex texts and emphasized on ones word precision in a way I hadn’t seen before, and I very quickly was faced with the reality that my current skills would not suffice. While I still struggle, attending office hours and seeking additional help has helped my ability to analyze and write grow in a new direction I hadn’t experienced before. Reflecting on this class, I have now seen the true power each word carries in developing its message, and even though it’s been challenging, it has strengthened my skills and understanding beyond what high school taught.
How has the entire literacy narrative project helped you to meet the Learning Outcomes for this class?
I think when I first wrote Literacy Narrative Part 1, it helped me organize my thoughts very differently from how I wrote in high school. In high school, I rarely wrote anything related to my own experiences, and most of my writing was much more analytical than personal. To some degree, I realized that I needed to allow myself to be vulnerable in order to express my true experiences and emotions. I organized my essay by breaking my journey with reading and writing into a few key points—major difficulties and improvements.
In addition, reading Hillary Chute’s Graphic Women and Why Comics? From Underground to Everythinghelped me plan out my comic narrative (Literacy Narrative Part 2). This allowed me to be much more creative in terms of visual thinking, which is something I really enjoy and something I never expected to have the opportunity to practice in college. It felt powerful because I was able to rediscover many memories about my reading and writing experiences, and the emotions felt even more vivid to me than they did in Part 1. I turned my drawings into a comic memoir, following comic structures, and I used techniques such as adjusting the size of the gutter to control the pacing of my narrative. In Literacy Narrative Part 3, I revised Part 1 because I realized there was much more to add to my memories of reading and writing after completing Part 2.
How was it to return to the alphabetic literacy narrative after having created your comic? How did you think differently after having worked in the visual medium and now returning to a text narrative?
Returning to the alphabetic narrative made me remember many details that I missed in my first literacy narrative. I think this happened especially because English is my second language, and I could not fully express myself in writing the way I could in my comic, which was not affected by language barriers. I felt inspired by my drawings, and my language in this version (Literacy Narrative Part 3) became much more vivid because I was able to add more emotion to it.
How do you see the story you are trying to tell in different terms now? Was your analytical thinking process any different?
I think my analytical thinking process is different now, and I can see the story I am telling in a new way. I see myself with more emotion and with experiences that feel closer to real life in my writing. This time, I am more focused on telling a story that aligns with my feelings, since those emotions are now reflected clearly in my essay, rather than trying to remain overly objective as I did in the first literacy narrative.
“The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts” – Marcus Aurelius
Of course, this quote refers mostly to optimistic thinking and worldviews, but I spent two weeks to try and figure out how to improve “the quality of my thoughts”, or at least what factors affected their quality. Unlike Marcus Aurelius’ emphasis on optimism, the quality of my thoughts depended on how long I could journal in “flow state”. Journaling in “flow state” means that I pick up my pen and I start writing until I get stuck or lose focus. I set a timer when I begin journaling, and I write until I catch myself pausing or losing focus.
The points of data that I measured were: minutes walking in the morning, pages of book read, minutes of exercise, minutes passed before phone used, minutes spent listening to music, screen time, # of liters of water drank, minutes meditating, and finally, at the very end of each bar, the result of daily minutes in flow state journaling. With the exception of screen time (in which less is considered better), more of each datapoint is meant to “improve” my quality of thoughts.
I found that the data was unfortunately insufficient for my liking. My quality of thoughts ranged from about 10-20 minutes (give or take a few), and I would say it wasn’t significantly impacted by any certain factor. In all honesty, the data is also quite biased. The “quality of thought” is self-reported and not measured in the best possible way (there should be units of measurement better than minutes for thoughts). I do find great benefits in this sort of project though. It helped me track many habits that are beneficial to mitigate or magnify in my daily life, and how they can impact a certain part of my life. I would like to measure these same criteria for different outcomes in the future, to see how these habits can benefit other parts of my daily life.
This was my quadriptych sketch regarding man’s destruction of nature despite the enjoyment and benefits that it brings us. The panels depict a man planting/encouraging a tree to grow, reaping its benefits (along with the rest of nature, such as the bird), but suddenly deciding to cut it down (much to the surprise of the bird). The tree then grows back a middle finger, representing the destruction and negative effects of deforestation and other natural declines inflicted by mankind.
I would say that this assignment was less difficult than the triptych. The fourth panel allows for more than you can imagine. For starters, the extra panel allows for a significant amount of more detail and creativity than the triptych. You can use the fourth panel to illustrate ideas which you might miss out on if you try to condense your sketch into three panels. Furthermore, the extra panel also allows for more literary detail. There is room to tell a longer and more detailed story, allowing for more creative and narrative freedom within the quadriptych rather than the triptych.
In this assignment I was tracking how my physical health affected my stress levels throughout a two week period and I was able to identify trends that raised and lowered my stress levels. The higher ratings out of 10 that I gave my physical health habits during this time period resulted in an overall lower stress level and vice versa. I wanted to measure this because I am not the best at managing my stress but if I was able to recognize and document things that control it, I would be better able to understand how stress works for me. I chose to visualize my data like this because it shows the relation of each category to my stress levels and which ones had the biggest effects. I have also found this activity helpful but in the future I would like to find a better way to gather data such as more in depth descriptions of my workouts or the stress that I was feeling on a given day.
During this assignment physically tracing the pages of the book down to the smaller details helped me realize what the author was doing with each element. From the size of the panel to the colors, each part had a deeper meaning then I though it did previously and it helped me further understand how the elements connected to the plot of the story and the overall understanding of the assignment. I felt that it was easier to compare the two pages after tracing them and annotating because it forced myself to notice details in both pages that were similar to each other or that contrasted each other. While using the ABT structure at the end of the essay it felt that I was jumping right into my thoughts about comparing the pages rather than having a proper introduction paragraph which felt foreign to me. Finally, I felt this assignment helped me understand the small things that authors of comics do for their illustrations that may be missed on the first read and overall this assignment helped me appreciate a single page for how it compliments the entire story.
During this assignment physically tracing the pages of the book down to the smaller details helped me realize what the author was doing with each element. From the size of the panel to the colors, each part had a deeper meaning then I though it did previously and it helped me further understand how the elements connected to the plot of the story and the overall understanding of the assignment. I felt that it was easier to compare the two pages after tracing them and annotating because it forced myself to notice details in both pages that were similar to each other or that contrasted each other. While using the ABT structure at the end of the essay it felt that I was jumping right into my thoughts about comparing the pages rather than having a proper introduction paragraph which felt foreign to me. Finally, I felt this assignment helped me understand the small things that authors of comics do for their illustrations that may be missed on the first read and overall this assignment helped me appreciate a single page for how it compliments the entire story.
