Literacy Narrative

Chris Fenzel
Dr.Licastro
11:00
Literacy Narrative
My name is Chris Fenzel, I am one of three boys that my parents worked hard to raise. I am from Pasadena, Maryland and currently I am a freshman at Stevenson University, which is outside of the city of Baltimore in Owings Mills, Maryland. I intend to be playing club lacrosse this fall and spring for the school. Of my family, I am the youngest sibling and the only one to be enrolled at a university. My eldest brother, Brandon, is 25 and works for a surveying company. My other brother, Jake, is 21 and is an apprentice at fire safety organization. I have a relatively large family and most of us live in the same proximity. I have been raised by both of my parents who both work for the National Security Agency for the Department of Defense in the United States. I believe my family had the largest impact on my ability to read and write. From as far back as we can remember we have soaked in information of the world that surrounds us. The most important tools that have helped us do that is reading and writing. These came to us throughout time from one stimuli to the next. It goes without needing to say that some factors had more magnitude then others. Not only that, but everyone learned in some different experience of their own, and quite frankly lead to some being more intelligent than others. Everyone is still learning because no one is ever perfect at reading or writing. For example, in high school my AP English Literature teacher, Ms. Nizer, always gave these thick packets of vocab words and we were tested on it. She was quite the eccentric teacher. She was about 5’7, a heavy set 65-year-old woman with dyed red hair, she talked as if she had three shots of espresso in a 25-ounce cup of coffee. She was the sweetest lady until you got on her bad side, luckily, I haven’t had that with most teachers. I Believe her test is a prime example a continuing experience because it made me think about all the words I really don’t know.
My parents have had three kids including me, I am the youngest so when I came they already had a pretty good idea of what to do. Even at the elementary level of school they harped on homework and they would sit down at our table and ask me various questions. They often asked me the meaning of words and how to spell them. Even today when I explain something scientific to them they like to play the game of 20 questions and ask the meaning of various terminology. When I was in elementary school my dad would sit down and help me with writing and urged in a sternly yet fatherly manner to better my penmanship. At the time, my father was about 5’8, black hair and goatee turning white so to a little kid he was always a bit scary when he was stern so I listened but improved in increments. Now in the car was where my mom would teach to read things. In enclosed space, my mom is a loquacious person. She had always asked me to read road signs and billboards, at the time I didn’t have glasses or even knew I needed them so half the time I really couldn’t see them, letters were just blurry but I made out the words from the shape of the letters. From them always pushing school is why I believe it has made the most impact on my reading and writing which in turn leads me to discussing being self-taught.
By support of my parents I believe that has had the largest impact on my ability to read and write, but it leads to then on being self-taught. They had gotten me started and I had taken over by myself from there. I began to just do required readings for my elementary school classes, but back then I was an extremely curious boy, even more so than I am now, so I wanted to read more sophisticated books, and so began my interest in space. This is where I believe I developed a love for science. At that point, my grandmother started buying me books about anything science and even took me to the Goddard Space Center in Maryland. I believe starting to do things for myself was the second biggest impact because I still had the support of my parents and even my grandparents, but that support is the sole reason I could do things on my own. A little optimism goes a long way for a kid.
Believe or not one thing that helped me write better quality was the tv show “Spongebeob Squarepants” on Nickelodeon. This is a cartoon that started in the nineties about a yellow, aberrant, and kind underwater sea sponge and his misadventures with his various friends and family. A certain scene somewhat stuck with me in the show, it taught me to write in better quality. Spongebob is in boating school to get his boaters license but he can never seem to pass anything in the class. He has a big paper coming up and he gets input from his teacher, Mrs. Puff, a puffer fish, on what he should write about. I don’t remember exactly what she told him but he did with the information I will always remember because it was humorous but still sent a message. The biggest paper he must do for his class and he spends all night writing the word “The” and made it look ornamental. What that taught me was to not spend so much time on little details. Work on the bigger picture first then go in depth as to get a better understanding of what you are doing. A show that had made me better at reading and understanding things as whole was the show “The Crocodile Hunter.” This was a show about an Australian crocodile hunter in Australia. The man’s name was Steve Irwin, he was tall, had blonde hair, and blue eyes, dressed in all kakis with a safari hat to top it off. This show helped me because I watched it with the subtitles on to learn how to spell the names of different animals (he wasn’t just a crocodile hunter, he loved animals) and learn about what they are and what they do. I believe for our generation media has had a strong impact on how we read and write. Between the social media, like twitter and facebook, to information mediums, like the discovery channel, we have all learned something important that effects our ability to read and write.
When we were young our parents always told us, we can be anything we want to be and change the world for better or for worse. To this day I still intend on trying to do that, hence why I am studying biochemistry to later go into research genetics- genetic mutation in specific. Genetic mutation is an alteration to the nucleotide sequence of the genome in an organism. I have had and still have to learn much terminology. Although I have a good grasp on the topic since I pushed myself to take many AP science courses in high school. School I believe is the most important in developing the skills to read and write because in my opinion its where you find what you want to pursue to further your knowledge in a particular area which means you have to learn more words and write exceptionally well which is what we are all trying to work on in this class as well as just fulfill our general education requirements, or the requirements that we need, but why not take the most out of the class and learn something that will stick. As Nelson Mandela once said, “Education is the most powerful tool you can use to change the world.”
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Kessel, Jaclyn, Writer. Billy Madison. 1999. Performance by Adam Sandler, Universal Pictures, 2015. Accessed 10 Sept. 2017.