Since the start of this semester’s English 110, I had already had a perception of what I’d be doing in this class. The many warnings from high school English would lead me to believe that this is going to be the peak precision in writing and reading that I would encounter. For the last year of high school, I would be granted training to combat the foe that is college. An appropriate adjustment to a new level. Was it exactly how I’d expect it from the first day? Not completely.

Driven by the first idea that I’d been plagued with was the fear of not being good enough, and quickly , that was dispelled. From the first meaningful assignment, setting the tone for the beginning of our semester, the reading “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan. It was the baseline for the introduction of English. The story itself was written to convey a message and an argument in which English has no ties with a singular, given right answer. Additionally, the concept has a multitude of ways to approach English. For example, someone who isn’t familiar with English can say something in slang that has its own meaning for an already existing English term. But that doesn’t make it any less valid if someone else understands it.

Aside from the reading, though, I’d gotten exposed to the Rhetorical Situation. Essentially, all the bits and pieces that would possibly tie to the author’s purpose in writing a certain text. One of those bits and pieces that captivated my attention, though, was the context and exigence. There is a natural curiosity when it comes to why an author might’ve written something a certain way or what can be going on in the real world while the author writes what I, the reader, am reading. It might also be because I am a psychology major. Especially when it comes to fiction books, authors often reference real world events like prejudices or political satire.

Thinking about context and exigence made me consider the purpose behind my Language and Literacy Narrative. Far from what I expected, I remember my first trip to the suburbs. It was a real culture shock, and language and literacy played a big part during those two weeks. I thought my story would show how naive I was living in a new place as a kid. For some people, this kind of realization might’ve been night and day, but for me, it became one of my core childhood memories and something I don’t take for granted. I tried to make the narrative as descriptive as I remember, and my aim was to make it easy to understand.

So far in this class, I learned to improve my writing by using critiques from the writing center. At first, it felt tedious, but it turned out to be a helpful lesson about writing overall. This was my first narrative in a while, and it helped me understand the Rhetorical Situation, which will be useful for my upcoming Synthesis Essay.