essay #1

Submitted By ecunn13
Words: 968
Pages: 4

Education was really important in my family growing up as a child. I can remember learning to read and write around the age of three years old. I was participating in a reading program at the time that was called Hippy and I was also using Hooked on Phonics. Both of my parents would constantly purchase children’s workbooks to help me practice my writing.
Reading and writing was very important to my family. My mother and father didn’t finish college so they had quite a hard time progressing through life with only a high school diploma, especially my father. He was always purchasing different tools for me to use because he didn’t want me to struggle with reading, spelling, and writing as he did.
The Hippy program would send a representative to my house every week to go over the previous book that I read for that week and leave the next book that I would be required to finish. My mother was the main person who taught me about reading. She sat with me day in and day out going over Hooked on Phonics tapes and having me repeat the tapes over, and over, and over, and over. My dad and my siblings were responsible for me learning how to write. I can still remember my dad saying, “Always write neat and legible!” He would create my own handwriting sheets for me to practice then give me lined notebook paper and make me write within the lines. It was so annoying at times because if it wasn’t neat and legible then he would erase it and make me start all over again.
My first memories of school were very great. By the time I started Kindergarten, I was reading at a third grade level and I already knew how to write my full name including middle names and my numbers 1-100. During story time, my teacher would allow me to read stories to the class. There were even times where other classes would come over to the classroom to hear me read stories. I was always ahead of the curve in elementary when it came to reading and writing. As a 5th grader, I was already reading on a high school level. During my middle school and high school years, I think I started to lose my passion for reading because it was so much assigned reading and the book selection was so limited but once I became an adult I was able to regain my passion and love for reading.
My favorite books turned out to be adventure books and sometimes fantasy. I love being caught up in the characters and unraveling their stories page by page to finally reach the end. The best books are the type that have various characters whose stories intertwine with each other unknowingly.
I definitely wasn’t much of a story writer when I was younger unless it was a prompt given to me during school. I think that’s because I didn’t really have any family members that were huge story-tellers when I was growing up. Unless you would include stories about my family and its members that would be shared at just about every family function. Most of the stories I read came from books that I was bought growing up or when I would check out books from my school library.
I’m still not much of a writer now even at my age. I do believe that I can be a very good writer but it just seems that the older I got the more I disliked writing. I don’t even write now as a hobby. I’m not