Personal Literacy Narrative

To Learn Is to Change Life is full of risks, and that is what makes it so much more exciting. I took a risk in life when I switched from homeschooling to “real school.” This risk required me to walk through an unknown door. I quickly learned that in order to take a risk, I had to step outside of my comfort zone. If I had not taken that step to go out and try something new, I would not have learned how to survive in a new environment. We learn things in life by doing, and if we do not try things, there will be no growth. In the end I found joy in the journey of risk-taking. If I went back to the day I had the thought of going to “real school for the first time, I would have told myself the same thing: “Go for it.” When I walked through the school building’s doors for the first time, I was very nervous.
I wondered how I would make new friends. What if the school work was difficult? I was homeschooled until the third grade, and when I began “real school” I surprisingly thrived in my new environment. At times I was bored at the slow pace my peers learned, and I made many new friends. The glory days of high school were some of my absolute favorite times. I was able to get into some challenging academic and musical programs that fully engaged my mind and prepared me for college. I had several teachers say they could tell I loved to learn by the amount of hard work that I put into my school assignments. What could I say? Homeschooling gave me a desire to learn. I enjoyed how much information I would reel in every single day. Frederick Douglass had a life full of chances to grow. For example, he learned to read and write as a slave. In his autobiography he states, “I wished to learn how to write, as I might have occasion to write my own pass. I consoled myself with the hope that I should one day find a good chance. Meanwhile, I would learn to write.” His soothing hope illustrates that we must be motivated from the inside.