Literacy Reflection

Thinking about having to read or write, we never really pay any attention to it, it is something we just do in our daily life. I think back on times when I have done a lot of reading. I taught myself how to run a robotic welder for the last company I worked for solely by reading 2 huge manuals and did not notice I was doing that much reading. In another case I wrote many letters during my military service to loved ones. It becomes more noticeable to us when we write about something. It is more apparent to us because we are the ones writing it.

From 2011 to 2012 writing was the only way I could communicate with the people that I love when I was deployed. Also during basic training there was no other form of contact with family or friends other than writing a letter. While deployed we had to try and communicate to the local police, known as Afghan.

I think these experiences have formed the level of literacy I am at and that level will always be unique to me because of those specific events and I don’t think I would change anything about it, I like to think of it as lessons learned.

Sometimes we, in the service would come up with nicknames for things that we hated. We all hated the sand “moon dust” as we all called it because it was so fine and was impossible to clean up or calling our living situations “the suck”, no one seemed to ever get out of the suck. In my high school days I read the book The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. While deployed there were soldiers whose job didn’t require them to leave the COBs or forward operating bases (FOB) and those of us jealous and somewhat prideful that we did go out of the wire of that and did not have that luxury nicknamed them