Rachel: Okay, my name is Rachel Sullivan, and my literacy narrative is about studying for an evolution final that I had to take. And what I had to do to study for it. So, the class I had to take was Evolutionary Biology, and for me, literacy as far as reading and writing words, has been always connected with looking at pictures and drawing pictures, so any class I had where there's not a lot of visuals is really hard for me--for example, math and science. And the evolution class didn't have a lot of diagrams or anything. It was just very--it was a lecture class, and then there was a lot of writing for it.

So by the time I got to the point with the final, I was in a position where I needed to do really well on the final. So the night before, I was up trying to figure out how I was going to study for this thing. And I was dealing with all of my notes I had, and I was dealing with the textbook--and of course, I still remember the textbook cover, clear as day, because it was a picture--and I'm trying to study for this thing, and I'm like, "What can I do?" and it's 1:00. Luckily, my roommate was gone. So I had all the lights on, and I took down one of my Dave Matthews posters off my dorm room wall, and I proceeded to draw the history of evolutionary biology, starting with--you know, the whole Big Bang thing, and then there was altruism in there, and different developments. I guess just concepts, I was drawing the concepts that I had to learn for the final. And it was really intricate, and I ended up coloring it to try to help me learn it, and it was the only way I could think to study.

So I finally, you know, had it all drawn out, and I had covered the entire back of this poster, which was probably the size of a poster board, with my Evolutionary Biology notes. So I guess that's the story... And then I studied and I ended up getting a horrible grade in the class. Which was actually a good thing, because from then on, I didn't get anything than an A, but after that class, my freshman year, yeah, my GPA was not good. So I spent the rest of my college career making up for Evolutionary Biology, and never took another science class, and was exempt from math.

So that's my story about--and I guess the point of the story is, because I'm supposed to make a point, I think, is that every single memory I have of reading or writing has pictures in it. Like, any book I remember reading, I can remember the cover as clear as day, and anything I've ever written, I remember always doing--cause when I learned to write it was before comput--well, before we had a computer at home, so it would be typewritten or handwritten. And I would always have some kind of picture or the cover sheets for my paper were a huge deal. Like I would always have some kind of image to anything I ever wrote, so that's my story about literacy.

Rachel (follow-up reflection): I like the story that I told because it shows how the concept of visual literacy was something that was really natural to me, whereas some of my classmates had to learn it later. And in the field of composition, it's sort of a new thing in the past 10 years, but for me it was really natural.

Another thing I said is that--Yeah, and also the idea of multiple modes as far as using different modes to express yourself or communicate an idea: that to me was essential, and it wasn't an option for me--it was something that I had to do, as my story sort of demonstrated.

And then from a pedagogical standpoint, the event that I talk about demonstrates that learners need to learn in different modes, too. So the lecture class was really ineffective for me because I was left with oral lectures and written notes, and very few diagrams or no video or no audio, no online website, nothing like that, it was just lecture. And that was really difficult, so I think that demonstrates that people need to learn in different ways, and they also need to be tested in different ways, because the exam was just written--it was just a written essay test. And it made it really hard for me to demonstrate that I had actually learned the concepts, but had a hard time writing them. Um, yeah, so.