Horn 1

Noah Horn

Dr. Sally Griffin

UWRT 1102

11 January 2017

Reading and writing at this stage of my life are a lot like breathing and sleeping. I am

constantly reading everywhere I go, and I can write a text without looking at my phone. Like

breathing and sleeping, I rarely stop to think about their value. I breathe daily and I will likely be

asleep for around 30% of my lifetime, but because these are constants in my life (just as reading

and writing are constants in my life) I do not notice their value the way I might understand the

value of money or social acceptance. As I began to examine the value of reading and writing, I

began to see that the way I valued reading and writing has changed a good amount during my

lifetime.

I have always to some extent valued reading. From an early age, I would listen to my

mother read me stories. As soon as I learned how to read, I began voluntarily reading many

books in my free time. The first time I secretly stayed up past midnight was because I was

engrossed in the 800 page behemoth of a book (at least to a 9-year-old) Harry Potter and The

Order of the Phoenix. Throughout middle school I continued to value reading, I was a member of

the (not so) popular club Battle of the Books, for all three of my middle school years. I knew that

I valued reading for the stories I could experience through reading and I truly valued reading

through that sense. This was not the case with writing.

My handwriting was and is some of the worst handwriting I have ever seen. I wrote my

name on a form as a 19-year-old adult and someone could not tell if the lower case r in Horn I

wrote was an l or a capital i. This struggle immediately turned me off from writing. I was
 Horn 2

great at math, reading, and science and my intelligence from an early age was something I was

proud of. My inability to write a legible sentence or paragraph felt like a failure in an

environment I was used to succeeding in. This disdain for writing lasted all the way through my

junior year of high school.

The way I valued both reading and writing as a child developed into the way I valued

reading and writing as an adult in high school. In high school, I got busy and stopped using my

time to read full-length novels that were not required by my teachers. I instead began to discover

one of the most important innovations in human history: the internet. I got interested in social

media, politics, music, and sports, and the vast majority of my use of reading became rather short

and nonfiction. I never thought of what I was doing as reading, but an article about Aaron

Rodgers or a Wikipedia page for Twenty One Pilots is certainly experienced and appreciated

thanks to my ability to read.

As my reading of novels decreased, my writing increased. Two page, three page, and

four-page papers became commonplace as I continued to take honors and AP level courses. Up

until my junior year; however, I did not value writing. I saw it as a skill I simply did not have and

a part of my life I was ready to be done with after I finished college. Then I took AP Language

and Composition my junior year. I learned about how sentence length, word choice, and the use

of figurative language can be used to give multiple layers to a story. I became fascinated by how

writers draw attention to certain ideas and build the mood and tone of a piece of writing. I was

taught how to write. Not how to punctuate a sentence or write a thesis statement, but how to

effectively communicate ideas and thoughts in an understandable and useful way. That class

taught me more about writing and helped me appreciate more than every single one of my

writing/reading/ELA/English classes combined.

 Horn 3

Both reading and writing have become extremely valuable to me. I can receive

information through reading and I can share or search for information through writing. From a

simple text to essays that landed me over $100,000 in scholarship offers from 6 different

Universities, writing has allowed me to share my thoughts and ideas with and it has been vital to

my academic and personal success. The ability to read has allowed me to understand complex

ideas, experience incredible stories and given me an awareness of many important events and

issues around the world. I rarely consider the value of reading and writing in my life and my

understanding of their value has developed over time. Despite this, I legitimately cannot imagine

my life without my ability to read and to write.