Literacy Narrative
Zack Myers 1/28/2013 English 1A- Donovan
Literacy Narrative; Too Much to Say The problem that plagues the modern mind is a surplus of content. Increasingly in my generation, with the trend to binge on internet freedom, the average person has seen too much to be able to form a clear opinion. With an ever-changing fleet of perspectives invading one’s mind, it is as if one is screaming in a riot to try and convince themselves of their own opinion. The most influential instructor I’ve been lead by, a burly yeti of an English teacher/ wrestling coach; Aaron Cantrell, told me clearly one day that I ‘just had too much to say’. That was it; Eureka! He had struck the chord loudly enough for me to hear that it was made up of individual strings. When I looked down at the prompt he had thrown around the room, this leaflet that seemed daunting and futile, I saw that buried in the complex of Times New Roman, there was really only one question. There was one solitary string that needed to be voiced at a time to complete the chord the prompt requested. I only needed to have one idea at a time. Line by line, one string after another, I plucked each sentence out, and in the disarray of jumbled context and my grammatical errors; I heard a resemblance of harmony. With small adjustments in placement and a tune-up of fanciful synonyms, I began to hear the chord I wanted. ‘It takes bravery’ The Yeti-man proclaimed. ‘It takes courage to have an opinion and stick with it long enough to fully understand it yourself’. In a fit of fantastic allusions, to which I can show no decency to try and recreate, he said, ‘the secret is to believe what you say’. Now in a swirling mind, filled with today’s troubles, tomorrow’s worries, yesterday’s regret and consequential foresight, it’s hard to know who you really are. That’s the rub though, the practice; to alleviate the overwhelming amount of information that you’ve borne witness to, by taking a prompt one idea at a time. It’s all about figuring
Literacy Narrative; Too Much to Say The problem that plagues the modern mind is a surplus of content. Increasingly in my generation, with the trend to binge on internet freedom, the average person has seen too much to be able to form a clear opinion. With an ever-changing fleet of perspectives invading one’s mind, it is as if one is screaming in a riot to try and convince themselves of their own opinion. The most influential instructor I’ve been lead by, a burly yeti of an English teacher/ wrestling coach; Aaron Cantrell, told me clearly one day that I ‘just had too much to say’. That was it; Eureka! He had struck the chord loudly enough for me to hear that it was made up of individual strings. When I looked down at the prompt he had thrown around the room, this leaflet that seemed daunting and futile, I saw that buried in the complex of Times New Roman, there was really only one question. There was one solitary string that needed to be voiced at a time to complete the chord the prompt requested. I only needed to have one idea at a time. Line by line, one string after another, I plucked each sentence out, and in the disarray of jumbled context and my grammatical errors; I heard a resemblance of harmony. With small adjustments in placement and a tune-up of fanciful synonyms, I began to hear the chord I wanted. ‘It takes bravery’ The Yeti-man proclaimed. ‘It takes courage to have an opinion and stick with it long enough to fully understand it yourself’. In a fit of fantastic allusions, to which I can show no decency to try and recreate, he said, ‘the secret is to believe what you say’. Now in a swirling mind, filled with today’s troubles, tomorrow’s worries, yesterday’s regret and consequential foresight, it’s hard to know who you really are. That’s the rub though, the practice; to alleviate the overwhelming amount of information that you’ve borne witness to, by taking a prompt one idea at a time. It’s all about figuring