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Bedtime Stories
When I was young, my mother would read me stories at bedtime. -
Library
My mother would take me to the library to get books. Once, I selected a book on my own and told the librarian the title and what it was about. The librarian told my mother that I could read. My mother didn't believe her, so she selected a book at random and I read it. -
Kindergarten
Because I could read, my mother sent me to kindergarten early. I was tested for a gifted program and ended up being in a pull-out class a couple of times a week for GT instruction. -
Summer Reading Challenge
Every summer, my school would have a summer reading challenge. I participated, and always filled out the whole form with the amount of reading I did. -
Novels
I remember my mother reading Anne of Green Gables to me when I was getting older. -
Reading above Grade Level
When I was in 6th grade, I read "The Once and Future King" by T.S. Elliot. It was a very dense book, and it was supposedly above reading level. I loved the King Arthur legends, so I read it avidly. -
Acting
In middle school, my English class was going to put on a play. The selected play was "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by William Shakespeare. In order to audition, you had to perform a monologue. I performed a monologue from the play "Camelot." I ended up getting the part of Puck. Not only did I memorize my own lines, but I ended up memorizing the whole play. -
Creative Writing
I went to a gifted school for math and science for junior high and high school, so literacy was not the main focus. In my senior year I took creative writing as an elective and wrote a lot of poetry. I was selected to read often. -
Arthurian Legend
When I was in college, I needed to take a few courses for reading and composition credits. I was still very interested in Arthurian Legends, and luckily there was an English class that focused on that topic. I was able to read Arthurian legends from different perspectives, original languages, and authors. -
Technical Writing
I was a Computer Science major in college, and my final capstone class was a technical writing course. Technical writing was very new to me at the time, but I was able to write a technical document about engineering developments, specifically about Motorola, over time without using passive voice.