Childhood

Literacy played a diminished role in my childhood. It was not until events later in my life, both personal and social, that really led my to become interested in writing again. However, reading was still part of my life. I became enthralled with fiction books, spending hours just reading about anything and everything. Literacy as a whole was really evident in my life as a part of other events.

School, however, still required I keep my literary skills at least passably sharp. I began to recieve homework and tests requiring longer and longer written responses ("This lady is nuts.... TWO pages?!?!") forcing me to work on creating longer trains of thought, as well as methods to connect them. Mechanics, never a real challenge for me, became an integral part of my writing. I had a particular affinity for commas. Passages fo some of my responses probably would have looked like this:

"John, a rough, wild, rowdy little boy, paused, not knowing if Ms. Smith, his older, aging teacher, had seen his rude face, then went back to his work, chuckling."

The Links on the left are those events that marked personal milestones in my life, while the column on the right are those events and inventions in the world that eventually had an effect on my literary life.

• My Mom graduates from graduate school

• I get my first computer

• I discover John Steinbeck

• Rodney King is savagly beaten in L.A.
• Pathfider drone lands on Mars
• First "blogs" appear online

This was another event that affected me much more a long time after it happened, but since this is a timeline, I'll include it when it happened. In 1992, a pedestrian captured to brutal beating of an African-American criminal named Rodney King by white police officers. the event became a rallying point for protestors against police brutality and race relations. I often looked back at these issues when I wrote papers in high school and college, and it was a major point for me to analyze and freewrite about.

My mother, an engineering executive working for GM, received her masters degree in mechanical engineering in 1995 as a result of attending night school after working a full day at her job, 45 minutes away. Besides being a very intelligent person and supporting my reading and writing, my mom's graduation taught me a more general life lesson: if you want to get ahead in life, you have to put the work in. I apply this philosophy to all aspects of my life, including my reading and writing.

In 1996, my mother purchased a new computer, and her old one became family property. This was the first time I could actually operate a computer, and it was the beginning of the rest of my life, so to speak. I learned how to word process and use other functions of the computer. My parents also provided the computerized encyclopedia program Encarta, which helped me find information for school assignments and helped my learn to use technology to aid me in both presenting my literary work and finding information for research papers. I eventually used computers to publish 15 page research projects, type homework assignments, create my own websites (this is one of them) and keep various online journals and "blogs."

In 1997, NASA's Pathfinder drone lands on Mars. This momentous event (the first drone to land on mars in my lifetime) as well as the media and social uproar surrounding it caused me to begin to read and write about space and space travel. I discovered science fiction, and I have been an avid fan of it ever since.

Web logs, or "blogs," as they have come to be known, are sites devoted to the writing of any one person or group about- anything. People began this idea in 1997 and it has grown rapidly ever since, with blogs even being devoted to cats and dogs. I have personally created a few blogs in my literary career, letting my random thoughts out onto the Internet. I am also a fan of several other people's blogs, which often provide me with entertaining reading material and interesting insights for my own life and writing.

During my eighth grade year in the library, I stumbled upon an old tattered book jammed behind the rest. It had no cover, and the title page was badly damaged, but I could make out the words "Cannery Row." With homework to procrastinate, I sat down and began to leaf through the book. At once, I fell in love with his incredible word use and vivid descriptions. As my father lives on Monterey Bay, I found the book was also a tool to help me remember him. At first, it was only his words that made me a fan of John Steinbeck, but as I read Cannery Row a second time (and a third, and a fourth) my eighth-grade mentality began to grasp the messages behind the words, and that made me like him even more. To this day, John Steinbeck remains one of my favorite writers, together with Earnest Hemingway.

http://www.wvinternet.com/college/

http://robotics.jpl.nasa.gov/