Blog post #2
Haley O’Brien
I think literacy is the ability to understand and relay information about something, which is much different than the definition I wrote down before we started talking about this. I know see being literate as being well-versed rather than just being able to read and write. This became really clear to me through our group work, and I saw how literacy has evolved as quickly as everything as else does nowadays. I can’t even begin to explain how many literacies I use throughout the day. In school alone, I have French, Calculus, Earth Science, Writing, a job writing for the Environmental Assistance Office about environmental topics I’ve never been taught about, and I even take a class about vampires. You can’t succeed in calculus unless you know what an integral symbol looks like and how to use it, and French literally is a different language. I never really thought about learning about these things as becoming literate in them, but now I definitely do. I feel like I am really literate in English- I love to read and write, and I could break down someone’s syntax for hours. I have also always excelled at French, although native speakers would probably not consider me nearly as literate as I do. I also have to use different computer programs for my job that I would now consider myself literate in, even though I had no idea how to use them when I first started. Outside of school, I consider myself very iPhone-literate, seeing as I’ve had one for about three years now. I also really like art, and must be well-versed in the medium I’m using if I want to be successful. You can’t paint a perfect watercolor sunset unless you know whether your brush should be wet or dry. I think I could be more literate in both history and pop culture; reading that list of things we don’t understand as a generation made me realize I really need to read more, and I never know what’s going on these days. My parents joke that I was born at 30 and age every day, and because of that I also don’t consider myself the most literate with social media. I know how to use them for the most part, but I never know what to say. The same goes for texting. I don’t completely understand it, because I really like to read and write, but I feel this really weird pressure when trying to communicate with people virtually. I could talk to anyone in person and never feel any sort of shy, but you put the internet between us and I’m an awkward mess, so that’s a literacy I could probably work on. I did find that list very accurate, and although I think as a generation we’re probably more literate than that list portrayed, I definitely didn’t know a lot of that stuff.
