Growing up, I had always had an active imagination. As soon as I could formulate coherent thoughts, I would find myself creating vivid scenarios in my head and acting them out when I would play with my family and friends. As such, it’s no surprise that as soon as I learned how to read, I would bury myself in books for hours on end, completely immersing myself in the fantastic world that existed within the pages of a text. My earliest memories of reading consist of my mother reading bedtime stories to me from a large, tattered book with hundreds of short fairy tales. The book had belonged to her once upon a time, then my brother, and now it belonged to me. The voice of my poor mother would become hoarse upon reading me so many stories from that book. When she would state that my reading time was done and that it was time to go to sleep, I would whine and protest for just one more story. As I grew older, I no longer enjoyed being read to; I much preferred reading a text at my own pace, as it allowed me to take my time to visualize a written scenario. I would often find myself reading a sentence over and over again, just to make sure my mental image was an accurate reflection of the text. It was around second grade that I would find myself begging my grandmother to take me to the library to check out new books. My grandmother herself was an English teacher, and I believe a large part of my love for reading comes from her. She would never rush me or ask questions as I would carefully select which books I wanted to check out from the library that week. She would, however, often engage in mild competitions with me to see who could read more books that week, me or her. She almost always won.

As time progressed, my teachers began placing a significant emphasis on the importance of proper reading and writing. Toward the end of elementary school, I was placed into an enriched reading program that allowed me to explore my literacy in a variety of new ways. My teacher for this course, Mr. Poe, always encouraged me to write stories and to use my imagination to produce creative pieces. If not for the motivation I received from Mr. Poe, I would not have recognized that I loved writing. I loved writing stories almost as much as I loved reading them. At the time, I was still young and did not have access to a personal computer. I would bring a flash drive to school each day and utilize the school desktop computers to write my stories. When I now reread the stories that I had written as a child, I cringe at the grammatical errors and obnoxious formatting. However, I’ve never once cringed at the plotlines I had been attempting to articulate. I still enjoy writing stories and I find it satisfying to observe the subtle evolution of my writing throughout the years.

While I notice that my writing style has certainly changed a significant amount throughout the years, I find that my reading habits have remained essentially the same. As a child, I enjoyed reading books that were filled with mystery and suspense. I loved books with convoluted plot lines that would force me to put down the book for a moment to think. To this day, I still love these kinds of books. Having moved from my childhood home, my family no longer has a library membership. I now purchase my books. I fill them with my written notes and reactions at each scene, and when I have finished reading them, I line them along my bookshelf with the numerous other texts that reside there. My mother never nags me about my expenditure on books, in fact, she wholeheartedly encourages it. I’ve found that regardless of how much time passes by, I will always be enthralled by the simple activity of opening a book and immersing myself in another world.