Fidel Bazaldua

Professor Grant
University Writing 1103
3 September 2014
Literacy Vignettes
The most distinct event that I can remember that really influenced me to become literate
in anything was when my dad and I used to lay together in bed as I was falling asleep and we
would imagine gadgets and machines that were both wacky and theoretically would be useful in
our society. I really learned a lot from observing my dad as a child when he went to work and
came back at the end of the day and with virtually no help from any outside source he made ends
meet and more just so that we could live a life of comfort according to my standards. Through
his hard work and dedication I derived many of the values, morals, and ethics that I now live by
to this day. Growing up I saw my father face many challenges that I thought would for sure tear
him down but in the end it was him that kept my family going. My father was the one
maintaining my family financially but I have to acknowledge the way my mother made sure that
her children had the education that her and my father never had. I remember specifically when I
was in the first grade and I had a writing assignment that I didnt really care about so I decided
that I would do it in five minutes and I wrote as sloppy and as fast as I could because I didnt
really care. When my mom saw what I had written she just took the piece of paper and tore it in
half and told me that she would continue ripping my work if I didnt write legibly and with care.
At the time I was furious that I had to redo the assignment but it wasnt till in later years when
my teachers and classmates started noticing my handwriting that I really appreciated my mother
being tough on me so many years ago. I then realized that it was important to become literate in

everything that could later help me in my life. I idealized the idea of becoming completely selfsustainable in any form such as through the education in school or the education outside of
school. I really started to realize this around the time that I had a class called earth and
environmental science with a teacher called Mr. Timothy Adams.
Mr. Adams always encouraged critical thinking but in a form that I had never really heard
before. The way he explained critical thinking and how it worked in our day and age was as
follows verbatim: critical thinking is to Think about your thinking while your thinking to make
your thinking better. I was really confounded at first by this revolutionary idea but I later used
this motto in every one of my classes be it math, science, history, or even physical education. In
this class we were forced to think outside and reinvent our concept of the box. This class really
introduced me to the idea of learning from generations before me. I had never thought of history
as important because it was not relevant temporally to me but little did I know that it actually
was but not in the form of textbook but through literature such Atlas shrugged, and Tom
Browns Field guide. The next year the infamous Mr. Adams switched from teaching earth and
environmental science to teaching an entirely new curriculum imposed on our school through a
class called global impact. I thought taking his science class was daunting but it was nothing
compared to the concepts that I learned in this class. I started small by learning to make
connections between what I learned in one class and applying it across the board to my other
classes. Another concept that I learned was that of the fourteen grand challenges of engineering
which I had never heard of before. When presented with the challenges I started to realize there
were bigger global connections that I had completely been oblivious to such as the need for
sustainable energy or clean water. These grand challenges really reinforced my desire to become
an engineer and contribute to generations to come. Also around this time I also had another

professor who really piqued my interest in reading literature and he was my British literature
teacher, Professor Nickolaus Katsiadas. Entering that class I was really disinterested in reading
any form of literature other than comics and books I had to read for classes but when I came in to
his class every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and we discussed the readings he had assigned I
found myself really involved in the discussion of all the possible meanings of Una going to visit
the seven friars or Beowulfs last battle with the dragon and the implications of his hubris. I
learned that you can discern a deeper meaning in the text if you are willing to look deeper than
the words put there by the other. The realization that the words written on a page could give
insight into the feelings a population was feeling at a certain time could be completely different
than what was written in our history textbooks. The final value that I derived from Professor
Katsiadas class was to apply myself and I could find purpose in everything I do. In this class we
started with a class size of approximately thirty students and by the end of the semester we were
left with only eleven and out of those eleven I was one of the top in my class. I was really proud
of myself and this really motivated me to read works of literature that I would have otherwise
discarded as boring or dull. Reading through all sorts of literature I stumbled across a book titled
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.
As of then I had only been reading books with a story line with little or no concepts that I
hadnt already culminated. It was refreshing to read a novel with a deeper yet literal meaning
such as the one I found in Atlas Shrugged. I found myself really agreeing and pulling parallels
from the book to current situations in my life as well as the society I live in. As I read the book
and went about my life this really put my head in turmoil about what kind of person I would like
to be. At this point I came to the realization that I was applying concepts I had read about in
Rands book to my personal life and at that point is when I decided that I would be an objectivist

according to Rand. Becoming an objectivist really turned my way of thinking upside down since
before I didnt have the slightest idea what moral or ethical code that I lived by. The one thing I
did live by was self-gratification through entertainment and never working for it. Working for
something I wanted and attaining it through merit instead of award was really gratifying. I
decided that anything that I wanted in my life I would have to earn if I ever wanted to feel
accomplished. Attending classes I paid more attention to detail from concept to concept and I
started to apply what I had learned in one class to another. My reasoning skills from math I
transferred to Biology, what I learned in biology I applied personally to myself and to thought
process. The ideas from Rands work really revolutionized the way I did everything because
everything was connected to something else that I know I would need later in life. The only
instances in which I was discouraged to become literate were in any class where my writing was
to be conformed to a certain way. I hated the idea that I was being forced to write in a certain
way and to think about writing in a certain way. All through school years I have hated being
confined to one way of doing things since there are a vast amount of ways to do things more
efficiently and better. For an example of this I would have to refer to my semester in a Civics
course I had to take in High School where my teacher was so involved in our process of thinking
and taking notes that he actually set out a template for writing in our own journals. Every day we
were to come in, correctly follow the template set out for us and be subjected to a double
standardized criticism. I felt so oppressed that my interest in learning anything in that class was
outweighed by my desire to rebel.
In the end I would have to accredit my literacy to those who were with me every step of
the way and those who were there before.