Gill 1 Harry Gill Miss Eaker ENGL 1101-073 11 September 2013 Literacy Narrative

Sitting down and writing is and always will be one of the scariest things anyone can ever ask me to do. The idea of sitting and staring at a blank page or screen terrifies me and always has. This for me meant that school has been one of the toughest things to do as you have to write every day; be it notes or an essay. After the exams my freshman year of high school, where I completely failed English, I demanded an assessment to see if I deserved any extra time. It took three weeks and four angry phone calls from my dad before the deputy head called me into her office to discuss what was going on. After nearly an hour of me describing what happens to me when I step into an exam room; the quietness in the rooms is my worst enemy, I cant stand it. Even when writing this I have the television on so that there is some background noise. Another thing that makes me agitated is the layout of exam rooms is another thing that freaks me out to as it makes me feel like just another number in the education system so all my individuality goes out the window; you get lined up outside a hall in an eyrie silence and moved along like cattle when the teaches decide to let you in, for me stepping into the room is the same as shutting down my brain, in the dead silence I cannot just focus on one thing and work at it. My ears are constantly twitching trying to find that noise to home in on and comfort me. In my sophomore year at Pistford Grammar I had an English teacher called Mr. Stanley, an elderly man who had to remove he glasses every time he looked up from his desk so he could see the students. Thought the whole year he made comments about my work not

Gill 2 being good enough for one of my students it always got to me as I could put my heart and soul into a piece of work and all he would do is criticise it. He never gave positive feedback to anyone but the girl that sat next to me, Anna Lawson, Mr. Stanley would always say, you guys should take a leaf out of Annas book. No one would know what he meant as we all knew, including Anna, that she would rush out the work the night before it was due. This would get on everyones nerves but no one would say anything, as it was clear that Anna was talented at writing. This went on all year until it reached it climax three weeks before the end of year exams he took in everyones practise papers and took a day to read over them, the next day in class he handed them all back and as he reached me he put mine down on the table I was stood up at the time getting my bag sorted he pulled off his glasses and stated at me straight in the eyes and said in a voice just loud enough for the rest of the class to hear; This is was slow and stupid looks like without a seconds hesitation I replied with Fuck off sir and with that picked up my paper and left the classroom. Both me and Mr. Stanley were spoke to about the incident and it was drop on both sides and the school classed it that we both spoke out of line. That lesson was the last English lesson I ever went to and from that day English has been the lowest importance, for me, in my educational life. While I was in training for my SATs I had a tutor called Alison, she has been a family friend for many years. I can remember walking from my school to her office the end of my Junior year, and the first thing she asked me to do when I sat down was write something, thats it just write something! A thousand and one thoughts shot up in my head: How? What about? How long? After about five minutes of complete silence with Alison looking at me and me looking at everything but her to avoid eye contact she said calmly why not try describing the tree outside? And how do I do that? I thought as she looks at me with a questioning face, another

Gill 3 five minutes went by without me writing a single thing until Alison asked me what was going though my head; How do I describe a tree? I replied, I mean with out saying its made of wood and looks old. How about you talk about its texture she said how it looks rough and then describe all the different colors in it? I used her advise and wrote what I saw and the paragraph sounded, when read back, sounded like it had been written by a six year old. There has only been one main positive influence on my writing and that was my guitar teacher all the though elementary school, an old long grey haired rocker that stunk of cigarettes. He, I believe, was the first person to spot something be different with me when it cam to paying attention as he always used to let me sit in the music room all day every Tuesday meaning I would miss French, which I ended up failing, but he would try and get me to think of everything as a guitar tab; as these are the only things I can pay attention to for as long as I like because they make sense in my head; like this paper it needs and intro a chorus and a few verses and then an outro. This help has been the only thing that has ever helped me with writing, Its my only weapon when tackling a long written piece. We are all scared of something, sometimes you just have to fight your fears and hope you win. If one of these events happened on its own I think my view on writing would have been a lot better then with them all happening. Bad teaching and dyslexia have clouded my idea of writing, causing me to not only fear and hate writing but also to be absolutely terrible at it.