Abu Zafor Yousuf October 2, 2023

ENG 1101 English Composition 1

Professor Jody Rosen CUNY Citytech

Education Narrative

American psychologist Howard Gardener is quoted saying, “Well, if storytelling is important, then your narrative ability or your ability to put into words or use what someone else has put into words effectively, is important too.” I feel that this quote is exactly what I am doing in writing this essay. My life experiences in how I was introduced to writing colors the way I approach reading as well as writing. In this essay I will explain how I understand a reading and I translate that information into an equivalent writing.

My very first experience as an English speaking reader as well as writer was in college. English is not my native language, I had to learn it in college as part of my international study. I remember my professor’s method of teaching English as a foreign reader was to slowly reading each word as an individual word and then to decipher it all together in a sentence. If there were any confusions understanding a certain part, only then did we ask our professor for clarification. I have noticed that I continue to use this same method as I continue to read and write English as a foreigner, to my detriment. English here is taught sped up and translated in real time to native speakers and I find myself failing to catch up because I’m still stuck on a word I could not understand.

In the first reading, the article “Why I Taught Myself to Procrastinate” by Adam Grant, he writes about the pros and cons of procrastinating as a writer. And while he disagreed with procrastination being a boon to writing creatively, he ended up agreeing that it can be another way to write as a writer. Grant’s way to experiment involved him walking away from a half formed idea. “Next, I drew some inspiration from George Costanza on “Seinfeld,” who made it a habit to quit on a high note. When I started writing a sentence that felt good, I stopped in the middle of it and walked away. When I returned to writing later that day, I was able to pick up where I had left the trail of thought.” I can’t agree with this method helping me write better as a writer. I lose my train of thought and lose focus on what topic I am writing about. As a foreign writer I have a hard enough time focusing on the entire work. By even thinking about using this method of procrastination writing, I might as well add another foreign language added to English, trying to make sense of where one language ends and another one begins.

Grants even exemplifies my very struggles in the paragraph following his procrastination experiment, “Once I did finish a draft, I put it away for three weeks. When I came back to it, I had enough distance to wonder, “What kind of idiot wrote this garbage?” and rewrote most of it.” Because he left his original free thoughts that were probably linearly connected in some way, or at least would have connected had he continued writing out the rest of his original thought-idea, he instead came back to something he had started but left halfway done. A sentence doesn’t really have meaning if it’s just half a sentence. We depend on context clues to put meaning to this half formed sentence. What Grant had done is basically a disjointed work that made no sense when he’d left it for a significant time because it could no longer appear or read like a linear thought-idea because he never completed. And not only not complete it, he left next to no context clues he could use to even make sense of what his original thought-idea even was.

In Mike Bunn’s “How to Read Like a Writer”, the author references other writers’ works as how they write as writers. “When you read like a writer, you are trying to figure out how the text you are reading was constructed so that you learn how to “build” one for yourself. (pg.74)” I write like how I understand a reading. I take each individual word’s meaning and then I put it all together to give the sentence a meaning. It doesn’t always work, but this method has worked for me, at least so far. Bunn further explains this way of thought pattern in how a reader reconstructs a reading to further understand a body of work by ‘seeing’ it through the lens of the subject. “Perhaps I should change the name and call this Reading Like an Architect, or Reading Like a Carpenter. In a way those names make perfect sense. You are reading to see how something was constructed so that you can construct something similar yourself.” It’s almost like looking at an abstract art piece without knowing much of the real meaning of the art truly is. All you know is who the author is and what they specialize in, from which you make an assumption of the meaning. Most likely, you are using personal experiences and your own past history to color or put influence in the way you interpret the piece. In the same way, as you’re reading an unknown written work, you automatically take on the specter of the author or subject matter in the article, book or story. And most likely, you’re drawing on past experiences or even prior history of your own association with the subject matter in order to put meaning to the reading itself.

In the context of the “Education Narrative,” reflecting on what I have learned about myself in various roles can be a valuable exercise. In the education narrative, I’ve discovered that my journey as a student, learner, writer, reviser, and collaborator is an ongoing process of growth, self-discovery, and adaptation. Each role has contributed to my personal and intellectual development, and I continue to evolve as I engage with education in its various forms.