Part I

I thought this part of the article was particularly interesting because I never thought of the
literacy I have in other areas as actually being a literacy. A literacy I have acquired is one that I
hate with a deep passion. This would would be text message literacy. I do not understand why
every teenager, besides myself, feel the need to use the phrase “LOL” in order to show that they
think something is funny. At first, I was not text message literate at all and I often thought the
phrase “LMAO” was the person I was texting’s poor excuse of the spelling the word “lame-o.”
Sponsors of this type of literacy would be teenagers who are too lazy to write out the the phrase
“be right back.” Also, due to the several injuries and health problems I have had throughout my
life, I have become quite literate in the internal structure of the human body. Some might think
that one could not be literate in this subject because there is a limited number of parts and
everything has its place, but I think that becoming literate in the internal structure of the human
body is very hard because most of the words and phrases make little to no sense and it is literally
like learning a new language. Those who claim that learning the workings of humans is not a
literacy may be right, but I bet they have no idea what or where their exocrine glands are.
Sponsors of this type of literacy are doctors, nurses, physical therapists, and psychologists. They
are sponsors of this type of literacy in order for their patients to know what they’re talking about
without having to translate what they are saying to English.

Part II
In my hometown, people have vastly different opportunities to succeed based on who their
parents are. For example, I know for a fact that the valedictorian of my high school class (whose
sister was valedictorian of my big sister’s graduating class) was raised in a wealthy family -
mother a teacher, father an engineer - with parents who would not let her or her sister have a job
or too many extra-curricular activities so that she could focus on her school work. It was not that
this girl was smarter, it was that she lived and breathed her school work with the encouragement
of her parents. On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, I know kids that never had an
opportunity to succeed in anything other than what their parents had already set out for them -
growing crops. These who have come from farming families are not expected to do well in
school and teachers often pass them in order to get rid of them

Part III
Throughout my high school years, the literacy needed to operate computers has evolved so
much. Using computers in elementary school and middle school was easy because we were not
expected to know how to do anything besides open “Internet Explorer” and “Microsoft Word.”
When I got to high school, I was overwhelmed by the amount they expect us to know. For
example, I had absolutely no idea how to save something on a jump drive and now it is
something I do almost every day. I still don’t know to how type “properly” because no one ever
really took the time to show me how. Now I see third graders who type faster than me and I am
fascinated that elementary schools are teaching little kids the proper way to type.

Part IV
A skill that I have learned that I now use for projects and for my own entertainment is how to use
Photoshop. I learned how to use Photoshop when I joined my high school yearbook staff in the
11th grade. After first using it, I became fascinated with all the cool things that you can do with
it. By far, my favorite thing to do with Photoshop that I now use in order to fool people I have
met Kate Winslet and Julia Louis-Dreyfus is how to cut people out of a picture they were
originally in and post them into another picture. I suppose this skill is not the most useful, but I
enjoy it and use it pretty often.