The Secret Language of Comics

Literacy Narrative Pt.2

Slide 1: In elementary school, my favorite activity was creative writing. My imagination would run wild as I would regularly give personalities to the fish I had caught with my dad the weekend before.

Slide 2: I enjoyed writing stories from the fish’s perspective in the first person; I would narrate their life story up until they saw their last glimpse of light as they were pulled onto my dad’s boat to become that night’s dinner.

Slide 3: As time progressed, the writing styles my teachers taught me drastically changed. The creative writing I had become accustomed to nearly vanished, replaced by book analyses and five paragraph essays.

Slide 4: It felt as though any creative expression was compressed until only template-based sentences were appreciated. Therefore, my writing began to closer resemble this concise style my teachers seemed to prefer. I was frustrated at first by this tamper on my creative expression. All I heard was “less is more”, and the more words with less meaning I removed, the better.

Slide 5: When I entered eighth grade, the focus shifted from writing to reading. This experience was detrimental to my writing skills because I was not practicing my writing and my class time and assignments were instead reading oriented.

Slide 6: We read frequently and were not assigned written responses. Our analyses were discussion-based and we spent class time either reading together or discussing what we had read for homework. As a result, my writing skills were not being developed. 

Slide 7: Three years later, I elected to be enrolled in AP Language and Composition. At this point in my high school career, I had come to terms with the fact that I was a more stem-leaning student. However, this teacher reignited my interest in writing. Through his focus on the technicals of writing, my teacher facilitated my viewing writing as an artform.

Slide 8: Following my time in AP Literature and Composition, it was time to come to Emory. The next phase of my writing development occurred when I was applying for the Emory investment group.

Slide 9: During this process, I completed a stock pitch and had my first experience with business writing.

Slide 10: I have a close friend who is very good at writing stock pitches, and he showed me to write them correctly.

Slide 11: I studies his formatting and wording, and eventually became able to write similarly to his.

Slide 12: Since I have chosen to pursue a career in business, specifically finance, this is the writing style that will be most relevant to my profession. Therefore, it is ideal that my writing has developed into this style and I am content with my writing progression towards concise, business writing.

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