Growing Up With Literacy

Every now and then my sister and I would break out the home videos and watch them for hours. A big part of these home videos were of me and Lindsay, my older sister, singing and dancing in front of the camera. There was one part where I was sitting on our chair and my mom asked me to sing the alphabet and I greatly struggled to get the letters in the right order. At the time I would say that I was about three or four years old. As the video progressed along with my age, I became better at singing the alpabet. My mom had us constantly singing and counting in front of the camera and I can definately say that doing this had a major impact on helping me become literate.
My mom was a major part of helping me become literate throughout my life. Every weekend my mom would set a time in which we were all to read at least a half hour. I was to pick out a book to read and my mom would help me read it. My sister on the other hand was old enough to read on her own and I became quite jelouse of this. Everything in my life is a competition, even today being a student - athlete in college. I wanted so badly to catch up to my sisters level of reading or at least be able to read a book on my own. So every weekend when it was time to read i would run back to what we called the "toy room" and pick out "Green Eggs and Ham" from the big blue shelf. I figured that if I read the book over and over again with the helf of my mom that I would eventually be able to read it on my own. Within a few weeks I had accomplished my goal and looked forward to reading time. I would run to the toy room to get the book and then read it over and over again. After a while, when i pretty much memorized the Dr. Sues book, I began timing myself so see how fast I could read the book. Being able to read this book all by myself really motivated me to want to read more.
"Green Eggs and Ham" led to many more books in which i became fond of. As the years went on and was entering the fourth grade, I began reading books such as Goosebumps and the American Girl series along the Babysitters Club Books. Any kind of book which containg either romance or mystery was my kind of book. I loved the feeling I would get when reading intense mystery or scary books. I would read faster evertime the book became intense for I want to know what was going to happen and I couldnt bare waiting. When reading books that did not contain any mystery or romance much like many of the required reading books for school, I would have a hard time motivating myself to read. I would quickly lose interest in reading because I felt that there was nothing to look forward to and I just got bored of the book.
This boredom of books continued all through middle school and most of high school. Every now and then we would be able to read books of my interest such as The Great Gatsby, Romeo and Juliet, And Then There Were None and many others. The books in which I couldn't get myslef to read really hurt me grading wise, especially when it came time to write a paper on the book or when taking test to go along with the chapters that we were to read for that day. This became a struggle for me and I had a hard time forcing myself to read what I thought were boring books.
Now, being in college, I cannot say that I read all that much. The only books that I read are the ones required for class along with readings over the internet. Every once in a while when I am home for break or over the weekend and I cannot find anything to do, I would go down in the basement, where are big blue shelf is now located, and I would brouse through the books. I would sometimes find a book that I havn't read along with being of my interest and I would sit on our overstuffed couch and begin to read.