reading

1. -Always read books at a young age. -Was mostly interested in the mystery genre. -Read stuff like goosebumps, horror stories, "A Series of Unfortunate Events" -reading interest peaked in the 5th grade and steadily declined afterwards because the required reading books in school were too boring. I still read on my own time because my mother bought me children's versions of classic stories. -stopped reading books in the 7th or 8th grade (school and leisure) -dreaded Shakespeare, failed all tests on that subject in the 9th grade. -used sparknotes for all English assignments since that day, and still do. -My reading has been reduced to online news articles that seem interesting. -Began reading certain books again in college to pass time.

2. -Writing was never a strength for me, so i always considered it a chore. -whenever free writing was assigned, I couldn't think of anything, so I always preferred assigned work instead of a pick your own topic kind of work. -Even on assigned work I struggled with getting started and elaborating on my ideas. -Often times when writing essays, I would get a bunch of good ideas to include, so I'd quickly start writing them down, and would forget a solid 50% of them in the process. -Sucked at poems especially. 5th grade assignment was to create your own poem for the yearbook. A lot of people had really interesting or funny poems to share, but I couldn't come up with anything spectacular, or even remotely good. -Over time, my writing skills improved from vocabulary I acquired over the years. In the 9th grade I got decent grades on all of my essays, so I thought I had to be doing something right. Writing essays for me was best done at the last minute, the less time I had, the more effort I put in, and the better it turned out. I received compliments and good grades from teachers and professors for these last minute essays and research papers, so all I needed was some time pressure to get things rolling.