Category: Essay 1 Draft (Page 1 of 2)

Eng 1101

Professor Sean Scanlan

Home, a place you can stay and relax when you’re tired. As a student when they’re tired they don’t just rest on their bed, they rest on their “intellectual home”. Intellectual home is different than the regular home. Why? Because its a place(s) where people can relax and be themselves without caring whats happen outside the “intellectual home”. As of myself, my intellectual home would be balcony, because it gives me fresh air and sunlight, it makes me so relax that I can even forget to eat lunch.

Through out the readings of the semester I’ve find a few of the stories that has the idea of intellectual home. In the reading “Where I learn to read” by Salvatore Scibona, states that a student whose working in KFC with minimum wage has struggle with education. One of the struggle was that she had a hard time reading books because he couldn’t understand it. His intellectual home was the being in school when he got motivated,that St.John lets him stay inside for vacation.

My own intellectual home is anywhere that has a balcony. Why? Because where i live now is quite small, the only place where I can breath some fresh air is the balcony. It makes me feel free

English 1101

Intellectual Essay Draft

Professor Sean Scanlan

Intellectual Essay Draft

Everyone has assignments they have to complete, whether it is a student or worker but we all have our own individual space that we can do our best work in. In other ways it can be called an, “Intellectual home.” For others being in a noisy environment can be an intellectual home if that is where they are comfortable working in. We all have our own preferences, but it’s all on what makes us comfortable. My intellectual home would be somewhere with not to many noises or distractions and has a clean work place such as my room or basement.

With all the reading we were able to do there was a similarity in which each of them shared which was being able to find a change that would benefit them. For example this is portrayed in “Where I Learn To Read” by Salvatore Scibona. A student who had no motivation for school and was satisfied with just working at KFC on a minimum wage. Scibona was in his 3rd year of high school when he wanted to drop out and was barely able to read a page of a book since reading was one of his struggles. Even though Scibona found reading difficult he tried putting an effort into reading anything he would be amused by. By his senior year things were starting to change he read a brochure about a college which had caught his attention since it was located in New Mexico. Finally Scibona was able to find motivation in something. He had went onto to college at St. Johns and was able to learn and read as well as being able to excel in his studies. Scibona’s intellectual home was being in school and this was made clear when Scibona stated he would ask St.John to let him in that it was like vacation for him.

In the second reading, “Superman and Me” by Sherman Alexie. Alexie came from a less fortunate family but still made the most of it. Sherman Alexie had an interest in reading books specifically superman comic books. If there weren’t any superman comic books to read Alexie would read anything from repair manuals to magazines. Reading can be said to be an intellectual home for Alexie since it was his only way away to be distracted from his lifestyle of living in poverty. Alexie states, “I read auto-repair manuals. I read magazines. I read anything that had words and paragraphs. I read with equal parts joy and desperation. I loved those books, but I also knew that love had only one purpose. I was trying to save my life.” The author Sherman Alexie was trying to say that reading was a way of saving himself.

Both readings contributes in a way towards my intellectual home. For example, “Where I Learn To Read,” contributes to a student going away to college which became his intellectual home while my intellectual home is in my room or a quiet and clean environment. These both go hand in hand because both places are an area study with less distractions to enable us to focus more on our tasks that is given to us. Even though the next reading, “Superman and Me” by Sherman Alexie doesn’t have a place to call an intellectual home and grew up in poverty he still used the resources he had to help benefit himself which was reading. With reading being an escape from distractions and the feeling of poverty it can contribute to how a room can be compared as well. Reading being an escape route for Alexie brought a sense of ease the same way a quiet room can help someone think more clearly about certain situations. Even though Alexie did not have the proper resources he still made the most of what he had and became a future author. Everyone has an intellectual home whether it is a thought process or an actual place, but regardless what your intellectual home is it plays the same role which is to help us focus more on a task to help us get the work we have done to the best of our ability.

I was able to find my intellectual home while I was in High School. It was the second year of high school and I had just made the JV basketball team but there was more to basketball than actual playing. Some of the requirements to stay on the schools basketball were making it on time to study hall, doing good on all homeworks and test, but most of all being able to keep your grades up. Staying on the basketball team was considered to be a privilege since our team was considered a D3 school team. I remember always going to study hall and doing homework for classes but being a locker room as a study hall it was always active and noisy especially while being around other athletes who either had little to no homework. As time went on and I was stuck in this noisy environment and being distracted by everything going on around me my grades were dropping. Not only because of those around me but because the environment I was around wasn’t a good place to focus. Due to my grades dropping I decided to show up to study hall and when time came to start our work I would ask to use the office in the locker room as a quiet well organized place to get my work done. This helped me improve my grades stay on the basketball team and more importantly helped me to find out what my intellectual home was. Now I know a clean and quiet environment is what I need to help me do my work and stay focused.

In conclusion we all have our own intellectual home but is used for the same purpose which is to help us stay focused and on task with our assignments done to the best of our ability.

Rachael Cosbert

Professor Scanlan 

ENG 1101

March 10, 2021

Intellectual Home

As a young girl my educational journey was always welcoming and comforting, with teachers who really assisted with my academics full on while caring about my emotions and opinions about the work assigned. Yet my biggest enemy was English, I taught myself how to read when I was four years old. English classes to me were not interesting to me at all in middle school, especially during the times we had independent reading; I could not focus on the book, I could not ‘create a picture’ in my head, I never felt any emotion towards the books I had. I felt like I was failing myself at 13. Salvatore Scibona’s narrative Where I Learned to Read relates to me because I went through the exact same journey he did. 

My major educational turning point happened mid 8th grade when my humanities teacher told the class “if you need help with finding books to read, I’ll help” Right when she announced it, I went straight to her for books. She gave me three books she really liked; The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, The Outsiders, and Looking for Alaska. Once I started reading them my interest peaked, I needed those books for the challenge. Each page, word, and letter alleviated my lack of caring and pushed my desire to read farther out. In Scibona’s piece he states “Early senior year, a girl in homeroom passed me a brochure that a college had sent her.” That said college was his intellectual home, the girl was basically his enlightenment just like my teacher. 

After reading the three books, I kept going back to her for more and more; her guidance and small talks we had made me find comfort in English class and future classes. When I graduated middle school she told me to continue reading and I followed her words until I got to high school. High School was a brand new slate for me, where I found myself reading more and more. I ended up loving my English class freshman year – the years after I only took AP and Honors english classes broadening my horizons when it came to analyzing characters, understanding the plot, making connections to the outside world. I fell in love with words and the emotions behind them. 

In comparison to Scibona’s journey to reading, I needed a push to unlock the knowledge I never knew I had. As I write this I came to the conclusion that I do not personally have an intellectual home; I find comfort in challenging myself, not in a specific place like Scibona found with St. John’s – it is mainly a mindset I possess. The more searching I have to do, the more comfort I find. Alike Scibona his writing tackles the narrative of a heroic state from struggles to success, where I on the other hand found success and attentiveness due to consistent reading.

Nathaniel bailey
English:1101
3/2/21

My Intellectual Home

Studying helps me retain and keep the information, but based on the environment I’m in it could be difficult. Inside of my house, there is unwanted noise and that can be distracting at times, especially out in the open areas. As a result my intellectual home just so happens to be around a table in my room. My table is also a place where I enjoy reading, this not only helps increase my vocabulary, but I aspire to be a musical artist and it helps with storytelling. It is quiet and is a place where I can think best. This is similar to the character of one of my favorite readings. Out of all of our readings, the one that I enjoyed the most is “learning to read” by Malcolm x. It’s about Mr. Malcolm and how he learned to read while locked up in prison, although he was able to get points across to people whenever he spoke, reading had seemed to be a challenge for him. So while facing this obstacle he took it upon himself to open up a dictionary and familiarize himself with the words by copying every word written in the dictionary onto a table.

His intellectual home in my opinion is what makes the story so inspirational because it is similar to mine. It starts with the process of copying the dictionary on a table inside of a prison with the inspiration of trying to write a letter to his outside pen pal called Mr. Elijah Muhammad. Mr. Malcom and I have similar but different intellectual homes in terms of settings, process, and inspiration. We both used tables as a source to help us study. But whereas his process was copying down definitions and writing them out to understand, my process is learning through repetition. If I repeat a word and definition, after a while I’m able to remember the words like the back of my hand. I use this method because I tend to forget something when I get nervous, let’s say while doing a test, I’ll be able to remember important information by constantly replaying it in my head. Whereas his inspiration was writing to his pen pal mine would have to be my best friend. She is a very smart individual and whenever I need help she is always there to support me academically. My goal is to have a GPA that surpasses hers one day. Now for Malcolm X’s setting (prison), I feel as though I can no longer complain about needing a specific environment to work in. I understand that everybody works differently but he didn’t have the luxury of being in a place where he could call home or feel safe. Yet he was still able to power through it with a minimum amount of sleep for continuous nights. Meanwhile, my intellectual home setting needs to be nice and comfortable, but Mr. Malcolm was in a place that was built to make people uncomfortable.

An educational experience that has helped influence my intellectual home would have to be when I was learning my multiplication tables. There were a lot of numbers involved and it was easy to get frustrated and confused. When I first attempted to learn about multiplication, it was after school which was full of distractions so I took it upon myself to study in a quiet room with my best friend. when copying down the information didn’t work, she came up with the idea of repeating out loud till I know it by heart, and because saying it out loud made it easy to remember we made that a skill that I use to study. This method was not only used for multiplication, after finding out how helpful the repetition method was I started using it for other subjects and is a skill I use almost every day.

Now that I’m learning online I believe the best way to adjust my intellectual home is by finding a new source of inspiration. Since my best friend and I aren’t in the same class anymore it’s been difficult to find inspiration to do my work to the best of my ability and though I can call her up sometimes it’s not the same as her being there in person to help me. So I will need to find someone I’m around daily to be my new inspiration or figure out a way to make myself my inspiration. You’d think trying to keep good grades should be enough inspiration but when work piles up and I get bombarded with an overwhelming amount of h.w and/or school work I tend to give up on doing it. She would always be on my back about getting my work done and when I would get it done I would be rewarded with ice cream it was something simple but it worked. Now we can’t even go outside without a mask anymore, so finding a new motive to do my work would be hard, but when I do it will surely improve my work ethic and become a new and improved addition to my intellectual home.

While doing this paper I learned that my intellectual home was never really about comfort. It’s more about finding a place to study in a room that I’m familiar with. Before the quarantine, the classroom would have been my intellectual home. But because classes are now online I had to adapt to the circumstances and find a place that I find it easiest to study.

Elijah Heredia

March 1, 2021

English composition 1

Intellectual home

Design thinking

What is my intellectual? Well first let me explain what an intellectual home is, an intellectual home is the people, places, and/or process you need to help you do your best academic work. This question is hard for me to answer because I do not have a straight answer, my intellectual home is a very contextual process for me. My intellectual home depends on a lot of things how I am feeling, what assignment I am doing, the class, who is around me. If I am not feeling in a good mood I won’t be able to get any work done because too many thoughts may be in my head. If the assignment is something intriguing to me or not matters because if I feel like the assignment is not interesting I won’t try as much whereas on an assignment that catches my mind more I give full effort. The class and or professor can also change how I get my best academic work done because if they do not have me engaged or if they treat me a certain way I will want to do their work more and ask for their help more. And finally whoever is around me can impact me too because if I am around unmotivated people or people who make lose focus or motivation I tend to get distracted or if I am around friends sometimes I will goof off too much, but sometimes working with others or friends really helps me it just depends on if they are trying to get their work done too. For me, my intellectual home probably can just be summed up to where I feel most comfortable and motivated.

One reading that has helped me better understand my intellectual home is Salvatore Scibona’s “where I learned to read” written in the new yorker on June 13, 2011. Salvatore explains his story of growing up not wanting to be in his hometown, how he did not enjoy school especially when they gave him something to read. Salvatore goes onto explain how he did like reading even tho he fully did not understand how to read,  but only when he chose the reading himself you see this when he says “As long as nobody had assigned the book, I could stick with it.” in line 11 of paragraph 3. Later on in his essay, Salvatore chose to go to saint john’s college to continue his next level of education all because he loved how the system of the school was set up for him to read more interesting books. You can see this in the fourth paragraph in lines 8-10 “Like, you would read book books. The Great Books, so-called, though I had never heard of most of them.” this shows you how he was fascinated by the idea of just reading books even if he did not understand them. Eventually, Salvatore explains how all he did in college was read and how much he loved it, loved his friends and teachers who would just read with him and discuss the readings. Throughout his story, you see him from someone who could not read, was not happy with the school, and was uncomfortable where he was at, to being someone who loved education, someone who could read at a great rate, and most importantly he was happy and comfortable where he was at, This was his intellectual home.

Salvatore’s intellectual home is a lot like mine, but we have some differences. Salvatore’s intellectual home is a place where he can read and be surrounded by people who love reading just as much as him because he feels comfortable in this place. For me, I too have an intellectual home that involves comfortability, but it does not involve reading specifically my home is more contextual a lot of things can impact how much work I get done and how comfortable I am. For me, my best work was done in my digital media classes because it felt open and free to make mistakes or ask questions it was fun for me just to start what was called a “design thinking process” in my highschool’s digital media classes. This process was all about problem-solving and going step by step. Another thing that made me love these classes was being able to do what I wanted for an assignment all though we had a guideline or overall subject to cover I was allowed to approach that in any way I wanted and really be creative in my photoshop, digital animation, or just creating something physically like when we created cars out of clay or made a 3d shoe model on adobe or when we made a skateboard and a nightlight. I was just always excited to learn in these classes I never cared for a grade I just wanted to do something new and fun every day.

3.3.2021          Essay Draft     Eng1101         

Home is anywhere your heart is, I know it is a cliché but its true and because it is true, I think it is safe to say your intellectual home is anywhere your brain is, where you are most cognitively comfortable. My intellectual home is anywhere I could hear myself think, where its quiet, it could be anywhere really, silence is my intellectual home.

Salvatore Scibona and Bilal Rahmani both found their intellectual homes in institutions. In “Where I learned to Read” by Salvatore Scibona, he talks about how dull he was before he found his intellectual home, he was not a very good student but he loved to read and that helped him to find it similarly, in “Chronicles of a Once Pessimistic College Freshman” by Bilal Rahmani, Rahmani wasn’t always the model student, he did enough and when he became a freshman and experienced the uneventful side of being a college student he had lost hope and school became a chore until he found his intellectual home in English class. Unlike Scibona and Rahmani my intellectual home is not fixed but similarly to them I found it in an institution. I found that I am more focused and do way better in a quiet classroom than a noisy one, I dislike noise, but I love the quiet, so any quiet, tranquil place is my intellectual home.

About a year or so ago, I was a college now student. I have always been horrible at managing time and a top tier procrastinator something I am working on even right now but back then I had an exam one Saturday morning that I did not study for. I tried studying on the train on my way there it was too noisy, I came in the building and tried studying in the hallway other students voices would get in the way so I went to the library. Best decision ever. It was quiet and it had these separating cubicle rows that made it even better and in that 15 minutes I was my most intellectual self, I passed my law exam, properly. Like Scibona and Rahmani, I am not always a model student but knowing what my intellectual home is aids in my quest for greatness.

Considering how everything is going, I would have to revise my intellectual home to guarantee success. There is a pandemic happening, most of the time I am home, there is no library I could go to all the time or quiet classrooms at school anymore. In order to get the most out of City Tech, my classroom is at home, so I must make home my intellectual home.

English 1101

Essay Draft 1

Professor Sean Scanlan

My Intellectual Home

When completing any assignment given whether it’s to write a report, answering questions based on a textbook, or any other assignment which takes focus you would probably want to make sure it the best quality of work. For me, when completing an assignment, I can’t be in a loud environment or even be around people that aren’t trying to help but rather distract me. I’d rather work in my intellectual home; which is a place, people, and process that helps maximize the quality and production of the work. My intellectual home is a quiet place whether it’s the library or even my room, where I could focus on the task and I don’t mind working with others, only if they have the same goal which we could help each other out. 

This semester I had read many different stories on how people had found had a major change in there that greatly benefited them. My favorite is between stories my first being “Where I Learn to Read” by Salvatore Scibona which is about how the author Salvatore Scibona at first felt his school life was becoming nothing but a failure and didn’t fully understand how he worked hard only for his job, but when it came to doing assignments such as reading he would struggle to read a page. The strange thing is that Salvatore would go to his backyard and read books such as Leaves of Grass, etc, and he would actually enjoy reading books in his free time but just couldn’t read them when they were assigned to him. At the end of high school, Salvatore felt like he didn’t know what was next for him in life, and he was given a second chance to fix his bad habits and become a successful student, by attending St. John’s college. Salvatore ended up finding his intellectual home, which was the college itself. It even states “I would scrap everything (or so I usefully believed) and go to that place (St Johns)  and ask them to let me in. It felt like a vacation. It was a vocation…. Reader, I married it.”. This implies how much the school fit him and when he wrote “Reader, I married it” he had grown strong feelings for reading which he didn’t have at the beginning of the story.

The second reading was one of my favorites is “Superman and Me” by Sherman Alexie, which consist of the author giving his background story of how he had to learn how to read even while being less fortunate to get the right materials to help him out, so he had to basically learn how to read from reading Superman Comic books. Sherman Alexie’s intellectual home is reading because that process that he repeated is what he felt saved him from the cycle of poverty. It states “I read auto-repair manuals. I read magazines. I read anything that had words and paragraphs. I read with equal parts joy and desperation. I loved those books, but I also knew that love had only one purpose. I was trying to save my life.”. The author determined that reading was the answer to a better lifestyle or life in general.

The intellectual homes in both reading I had elaborated to you can be connected in the same way my intellectual home. For example, while Salvatore Scibona’s intellectual home is college, my intellectual home is a quiet library or my room which is connected because both the author and I were able to focus more on the task at hand which he benefited from. For him, he fell in love with reading and I have a higher quality of work in my quiet space. The other reading is different because Sherman Alexie’s intellectual home isn’t a place it’s a process that is reading. This is still connected to my intellectual home because if you think about how we both benefited off of our preferred place, process, or even people we work with a lot of things can change. Sherman Alexie didn’t have a lot of options but still took advantage to gain knowledge from reading which he had indeed benefited from by becoming a writer in the future. Ultimately all intellectual homes have the same goal which is to help focus and put all our energy into one task or assignment the only difference as states earlier are the place you choose, people you choose to work with, and the process that you take to accomplish the best quality of work.

I remember back in seventh grade after school would go to a program called beacon because I and my friends would play games after school. Beacon had us doing homework for at least one hour right after school and I was never able to get any work done and if I did it was half done because I was in a room with all my friends joking around and not able to focus on my work. After a while, I noticed my grades had dropped due to me either not fully completing my assignments. This made me change the location for when we had to do work assignments. I went to the library where it was always empty or quiet and noticed that I was actually able to finish work and bring my grades back up. This is kinda how I discover my true intellectual home from thinking I could work in any environment to working in quiet environments.

In conclusion, intellectual homes could be different for every human being on the planet but they should have the same concept of wanting to work on better the quality of the assignment.

Jannatul Ferdaus

English 1101

Essay Draft 1

One thing that got my attention was “Learning is not easy, but it can change a life”.and for that, we need a Peaceful place to change our life. An intellectual home is a place where we can learn many things we can solve our academic problems. We can practice that place without any issues. my Intellectual home makes me focus on my career goals. It’s helped me to improve my life. I found my similar Intellectual home with Malcolm X.as my favorite article. I think my idea was similar to this author at the same time, I admire my intellectual home. To prove this, I will first explore Malcolm X Intellectual home place and processes then I will explain my intellectual home. After that, I will discuss how Intellectual homes change people as different people. Then I will describe a great experience I had in my life during 2020. Lastly, I will discuss how I found similarities and differences with Malcolm X.

Malcolm X decided to learn to read and write in his many years in prison. I appreciated how Malcolm X struggled to Read and write during his difficult time in jail. He understood it’s most important to learn How to read and write. Malcolm X’s situation before and after is similar to my issues. I did not have a shed to go to jail but instead, I had the lockdown in my house and secondly, I did not learn how to read and write but instead I got to learn how to type faster on the keyboard.

Malcolm X uses a dictionary to describe his struggles with learning how to read and write “But every book I picked up had few sentences which didn’t contain anywhere from one to nearly all of the words that might as well have been in Chinese.”Malcolm X uses description to show that he doesn’t understand anything whenever he tries to read, so to him, it’s like trying to understand Chinese. after being convicted of robbery in 1946 and he spent 10 years in prison, where he educated himself.

During those 10 years, he does not waste his time. He focuses only on study. He learns a lot in 10 years. he learns about history. He picked up a dictionary while he’s in prison. and reads and he copies them down and he learns how to spell them. He learned how to read and write because Malcolm X did not have a great education growing up before he went to prison, he was just out in the street. He was not very articulate but when he goes to prison he treats it like going to college. so he goes to the prison library. He teaches himself how to read. He learns a lot by growing in prison. and now he understands what the book was saying

 On the other hand, during the early stages of Covid-19, almost everything was closed and people were forced to stay inside to prevent the spread of this virus. All of my time was spent at home, with not much to do, leading to times where I was bored much more than often. To battle this boredom, I decided to learn how to type fast without seeing the keyboard because, during the time, I don’t know how to type fast. and I want to learn something new and I don’t waste my time that panromantic time, on YouTube I searched up how to type faster on the keyboard, and to my eyes, Videos were abundant for me to how I can learn I can’t remember how long it was, but all I know was that I spent a long time listening to the video. And the video helped out to memorize the keys. Then I understood how to put my finger on the right keys and how to memorize the keys.

The story “Learning to Read” written by Malcolm X discusses how he learned to write and read in the many years he spent in prison because of a crime he committed. After going to jail, He completely charged himself. While Malcolm X found his Intellectual Home consists of the process of reading and place of jail. And my Intellectual home is a little different from Malcolm X. I found my Intellectual home in my house. because of the lockdown, which has made me more inspired to learn new things.

Finally, both of these experiences have been sort of a turning point for me. Not in a sense that they changed my life drastically but instead they both experienced have made me think of life in a different way. First, learning to read and write makes Malcolm X more independent in life. We should not only do stuff that is practically needed but also do things that allow our inner self to have peace and explore our personality. On the other hand, learning to type fast made me more independent as a person as well as taught me a life lesson. This is not to ever rely on your family and friends for your needs because once you take that little step towards learning the thing you need that would make you much stronger as a person. Therefore, even though both of these learning might sound like small achievements in reality they have impacted life a lot.

Prof. Sean Scanlan

English 1101

Draft: Essay 1

  Intellectual home is when you have a place that you could focus and study in that place. My home is where I live. My home is a nice place to live. It has everything like a normal home would have like a kitchen, dining room, tv room, bathrooms, and bedrooms. My intellectual home is my room because it is easy for me to learn and focus. In my room I have a desk and computer to search up any research that I need, and I have enough space on my desk to put my books and learn or to also write notes. It is also quiet in my room so I could focus on what I am doing.

  One of the stories that I liked in class was “Chronicles of a Once Pessimistic College Freshman,” by Bilal Rahmani. I liked bilal Rahmani story because I could relate to him. He just wanted to do his time in school and leave he did not care about making friends there or to even try to be social to others. He went to class and went home to do his homework. One day he went to English class. He was with his classmates discussing the short story, “Cat in the Rain,” by Ernest Hemingway. To Rahmani he was an amazing author. He thought that people in his class did not know Hemingway and was like I guess ill answer every question. In the end Rahmani found out that the other students started answering and giving new ideas that he did not even think of or know about. It took over him and he realized they were adding new colors and something that not alone that he could create. bilal Rahmani started liking City Tech. In this story bilal Rahmani intellectual home was City Tech. The second story that I liked was “Where I Learned to Read,” by Salvatore Scibona. He did his best to fail high school. He failed English literature, American literature, Spanish, precalculus, chemistry, physics. He even burned his report card in the sink of the KFC where he worked. Salvatore Scibona worked in KFC his job was scraping carbonized grease from the pressure cookers. Salvatore Scibona loved his job working at KFC.  Salvatore Scibona liked reading but when he was not assigned to do it, but he was a lost cause to himself. Early senior year a girl told him about this college. The college’s curriculum had no electives and not a single book in the seminar list by a living author. They had no tests or grades and no textbooks. This college was called St. John’s College. Salvatore Scibona went there in the end and loved the college. It felt like a vacation to him. He learned how to read, and he made friends there. Salvatore Scibona intellectual home was St. John’s College for him.

 My intellectual home is different from bilal Rahmani and Salvatore Scibona. bilal Rahmani intellectual home was City tech college. Salvatore Scibona intellectual home was St. John’s College. My intellectual home is in my house in my room. I do share characteristics because I have a place to learn and for Salvatore Scibona and bilal Rahmani both have their spots to learn but there is in their colleges.

 My educational experience that influenced my intellectual home is my parents because they taught me how to try hard and work hard. The way how to build your intellectual home is that you have more tools to help you build your intellectual home and to also keep on trying to learn and improve like your vocabulary, reading skills and more. These steps will build your intellectual home to be greater and stronger than it was before you started.

Derrick Felder

Prof. Sean Scanlan

English 1101

Draft: Essay 1

Intellectual Home

Reading hasn’t just opened my eyes to the unknowns of the world, it has also helped me expand my vocabulary to be able to express myself in a better, more efficient way. I chose Malcolm X’s “Learning to Read” as my essay; while also admiring Sherman Alexie’s point of view in his article “Superman and Me”. While Malcolm X’s Intelectual home is centered around him learning to read in prison and his process of reading comprehension, my own intelectual is centered around the tone of the environment and the process of writing. In this essay I will first explore my own intellectual home, detail what makes up my intellectual home, and my future intellectual home. Second, I will explore Malcolm X’s intellectual home and his process of reading. Lastly, I will compare the similarities and differences in Malcolm’s process of reading with my process of writing.

My ideal intellectual home takes place on my rooftop with the light sounds of fast cars passing with a bright sun and slight breeze upon my face. Normally you’d think the fast cars and pedestrians passing by would create a lot of distractions, but that’s not the case. I use these noises as anchors for my mind when it tends to wonder. Sometimes when I don’t have that option to use the roof, I sit in my bathroom, turn on my led lights, turn on jazz music, and write. I’ve noticed I get some of my best work done while sitting on the toilet. I actually wrote the first five paragraphs of this essay on my toilet. An intellectual home is a place, a person, or activity that helps you do your best work. So technically my intellectual home is in my bathroom.

My future intellectual home, I imagine it would be in a big room with a giant window for sunlight to burst through. There would be jazz playing in the background, a big U-desk, comfortable rolling chair, and a sofa for when I want to get comfortable while working. This Intellectual Home I’ve described is the perfect setting for me to study and write more efficiently. Setting the right mood helps with my process of writing. I turn on slow background music and lower my lights just enough to see what I’m reading. The tranquility allows me to ease my mind, relax and get the creative juices flowing. When I get into my intellectual home, I could write for hours and it would only feel like minutes.

An intellectual home doesn’t have to be in a room, or has to be a quiet place. It can be in a park, with kids playing on the playground. Not everybody has access to a quiet space or a park. Some have to make an intellectual home out of what they have. After being convicted of robbery in 1946, Malcom X spent several years in prison. While Malcolm was incarcerated, he found his intellectual home reading and writing the dictionary word for word in his notepad. Malcolm’s process of learning is copying the words from the dictionary to his tablet and reading them aloud.  “In my slow, painstaking, ragged handwriting, I copied into my tablet everything printed on that first page, down to the punctuation marks. I believe it took me a day. Then, aloud, I read back, to myself, everything I’d written on the tablet. Over and over, aloud, to myself, I read my own handwriting.” Malcolm was heavily influenced by Elijah Muhammad. Malcolm would often write to Elijah and would have trouble articulating what he wanted to say. That is one of the reasons he chose to improve his reading comprehension and writing skills.