Help Received:
Thesaurus, Dictionary,
Meeting with Major Garriott, Peer Review,
General Research, Writing Center
___Maxwell Redmond Gallahan___
Maxwell Gallahan
Major Garriott
ERH-101-03
10 November 2016
“Enlightenment”
My literary journey is not complete by any means, but I think I have finally found the motivation I need to push me in the right direction to get to the point where I am literate. I had similar experiences in my early years of school as Keisha and Troy, from “Writing for Their Lives,” written by Jabari Mahiri and Soraya Sablo. Both of these kids where very talented writers outside of class but thought that in school they could never be authentic, or truly express themselves, in their writing. I had these same experiences from when I began writing in school till about sophomore year of high school. I knew I had the ability to write well and did so to my standards in my free time in a journal, but I never got the chance to write about something I was passionate about in school. But during my junior year of high school, I had an English teacher who changed my view of writing and made my mind wonder to places I have never really been before, which opened my mind to new points of view and in the end made me come out of my shell to become appreciative of articulate and well-spoken individuals, and aspired to be like them.
My English teachers name was Dr. Sidle. He was my teacher during my junior year of high school and his class was focused around the idea of non-conformity and transcendentalism. He connected with me first as a person before he ever connected with me as a teacher. The first time I walked into his class he told us about his life. He went from being a college dropout, to becoming an enlisted marine, to a Ph.D. in English, and teaching at a top 5 high school in Virginia, Saint Stephens and Saint Agnes School. He had me interested in him as a person because of his unique journey, as well as respected because he was a former marine. Dr. Sidle taught us about people from David Thoreau to Ambrose Bierce to Phillis Wheatley. Dr. Sidle helped me find a more positive outlook on life for myself which lead me to become a division 1 athlete. He freed my mind leading me to my literacy sponsors who helped me develop as a literate individual and got me to this point in my life where I am at a great institution that I might not have been at. That class and my teacher led me to become a division 1 athlete and developed me into a much better writer as well as gave me the ability to evolve as a writer because I am now more interested. From my teacher, there were two main inspirations that helped me gain confidence in my English skills and allowed me to develop as a literate person.
The first inspiration I gained from Dr. Sidles class was this quote, it is from Walden written by David Thoreau, “What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.” This has been a motivational quote for me in my journey to literacy. I have always been told that I can’t become what I want because I fit a curtain mold that they did and they want me to follow them, but I have always liked being unique and that quote has kept me on that path. That effects my literacy journey because my communication style is very witty which I see as being unique and rare thing. The second quote ties in with the first quote, and it is from Ralph Waldo Emerson, “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” This quote, like the last, has kept me on the path of trying to develop my own style of communicating and taking things from different people rather than being some sort of a carbon copy of a teacher or my parents. This class motivated me so much because my teacher stressed these two concepts the whole year. This developed a mindset and confidence in me that I could be smart and have intelligent ideas while also being an athlete. The idea of being a non-conformist has always stuck with me since then and has played an important role in my literacy journey since that class. This is when I started to become aware of articulate individuals around me. I started to study people I came across in my everyday life and tried to learn as much from them as I could to incorporate into my own life to develop myself as a literate person.
Movies have always played a big role in my life, resulting in actors becoming influential role models for me in my literacy development. After my enlightenment in my junior year English class I began to notice different actors and appreciated them more than I did before because of how well certain actors could convey a message that they wanted to communicate with someone. Matthew McConaughey and Leonardo DiCaprio are my two main literacy sponsors from the acting world. In the excerpt from Writing about Writing, Deborah Brandt mentions her definition of literary sponsors, “Sponsors, as I have come to think of them, are any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy- and gain advantage by it in some way.” Mathew McConaughey and Leonardo DiCaprio are both classified as my literacy sponsors because they have modeled what I am interested in acquiring and using in my own literacy practice. The skill that they have that I want to develop is the ability to articulate what I am thinking in my head to other people so they understand my ideas the way I understand them in my head. Both of these individuals are very powerful speakers and can stir up emotions inside of people, a skill that is rare and very appealing to me. This ability to stir up emotions in people is prevalent in all great leaders, which is ultimate a goal of any VMI cadet.
I got to witness first-hand strong literary skills in practice every day of my life, such as saying things with confidence, being about to speak to anyone and having a massive bank of knowledge, and during my junior year I was finally able to appreciate those skills that my brother and my dad had, which I knew I wanted to emulate. My two role models are similar to Malcolm X’s role model Bambi. This quote is an Excerpt from Malcom X’s Autobiography, “It had really begun back in the Charlestown Prison, when Bimbi first made me feel envy of his stock of knowledge. Bimbi had always taken charge of any conversation he was in, and I had tried to emulate him.” (Malcom X, page 120) This shows how highly thought of Bambi was to Malcom X. I can honestly say that my brother and my dad both hold that same degree respect from me, if not even more than that of Bambi and Malcom X. My brother has my respected because I have always looked up to him for advice and guidance my whole life and a lot of the decision I have made in my life, were made with him in the back of my mind or with his input being given on the certain decision. And I would have to say as of right now he has been right about every decision so far because I am very satisfied with where I am in my life right now. My dad has my respect obviously because he is my dad, but also he treats every person he comes in contact with, with the utmost respect and kindness. These are the reason I respect them, and both my brother and my dad have the same literary skill that I really envy and want to learn how to become proficient at. That skill is confidence in what they are saying. My brother and dad are not the smartest people in the world by any means. But when they same something, it will be in such a way that you think to yourself that they have to be right. That is an area I need to improve on in addition to other areas. But I think if I can somehow figure out how to integrate confidence into my speech, then I will be taking a big step in the right direction.
The last trait that I have focused on trying to mirror from my literary sponsors is the ability to be witty. I look to comedians for this literacy skill mostly, a main one being Ryan Reynolds. I have watched a lot of interview’s involving him and his characters in movies are usually very witty as well. The reason I find this literacy ability so essential or important to me is because of how I grew up. Similar to the kids in “Writing for Their Lives,” by Jabari Mahiri and Soraya Sablo, and how their literacy reflected their surroundings. My wittiness and want to improve at this skill comes from my surroundings and how I was treated as a kid. I was called fat, slow, un-athletic, and what have you. But the way I coped with this mental warfare was to have quick and sharp comebacks. At first it was not very useful for me, simply because I didn’t know how to do it effectively. But after my enlightenment period in high school, I studied my literacy sponsor, Ryan Reynolds, and tried to implement his skills into my own life through trial and error. After time went by wittiness just became my natural way of communicating with people, especially girls.
Having the English professor that I did, Dr. Sidle, helped put the confidence in me that I needed to get passed the fact that I was initially not a great writer or speaker. But after his class, I was able to study people in my life who were skilled in the aspects that I lacked in and be able to take the useful skills that they had to offer and mirror them. After I started to study the people around me and learn as much from them as I could, I have felt myself improve in literacy as a well-spoken and articulate individual.
Works Cited
Jabari Mahiri and Soraya Sablo. “Writing for Their Lives.” Journal of Negro Education. 1996.
X, Malcolm. “Learning to Read.” Ed. Alex Haley. New York: Ballantine, 1965.
Henry David Thoreau. BrainyQuote.com. Xplore Inc, 2016. 28 November 2016. https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/h/henrydavid120889.html
Ralph Waldo Emerson. BrainyQuote.com. Xplore Inc, 2016. 28 November 2016. https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/r/ralphwaldo387459.html
Word Count: 1745
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