Principal Cannon: “The more you read, the more you know. The more you know, the smarter you will become. The principal at my elementary school repeated this quote every morning after the announcements. While most children talked and played as she said those words every day, I on the other hand absorbed those words and lived by them. Read, grow, learn and gain more knowledge day after day. Even as a 17-year-old college student, that quote she repeated still stays with me and I continue to live it just like I did as an elementary school student. The personal literacy story of my past as a reader and writer is long and detailed, mainly because I can feed my mind as much as I want and it will never get satiated. The uniqueness of my personality created a filtering system for all the things I read and the style of my writing. As I have grown over the years, my literacy skills have improved immensely. From the first book I read to this course, I have had an impact on my relationship and experience with literacy. I experienced a range of different emotions, but in short I can describe it as a love-hate relationship, with ups and downs, twists and turns. Overall, I can say that the reading and writing involved in literacy has given me a lot; an outlet to express myself, means to improve myself and material to have fun. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay At this point in my life, I recognize that I am not as avid a reader as I once was. Throughout middle school I always had a book in my hands, always waiting for Wednesday “library day” to check out my next read. My friends always asked me “Why do you always read those big boring books?” They weren't boring to me though, young adult fiction books fascinated me; for example, my favorites were The Twilight book series and The Hunger Game book series. The fictional lives of the characters gave me the chance to live in their world and avoid my own where nothing as exciting as it seemed to happen there. It would take me no time to read one book and move on to the next. Lately my relationship with reading has been difficult to say the least. I feel like reading is inevitable in a way, whether it's reading a Facebook post or a street sign, but as far as reading things with substance or pages, for that matter, go far and few unless necessary . At this stage in my life reading books is no longer a simple pleasure for me, I now tend to gravitate towards news articles to read "Donald Trump's latest crazy tweet" and local newspapers to see what's going on in my community. Even though I don't read as much as I used to, I will say that reading has exposed me to different styles, genres, vocabulary and therefore made me a better speaker and a stronger writer. Writing is very important; it is a way of life and is essential for all people in all walks of life, including my life. Writing is a means of communicating and connecting with those around us and it has helped me do just that. When my cousin Bredon attended basic training last year, writing was the only way my family and I could, as he put it, "keep an eye on him" while he was away. I love writing, once I get the flow going it becomes so easy to get fascinated by the process. I gained most of my knowledge about the writing process formally as a junior in high school, where I completed the Advanced Placement course