Personal Literacy Narrative-2nd Draft

            As a kid, I was always fascinated with cars. Maybe it was because my father worked on them for a living, or maybe it was because of all the little Hot Wheels cars I had lying around in my room, I’m not sure. As I got older, I connected my interest in cars with my ability to do math somewhat well and my want to know how things worked, and decided that I wanted to work on cars for a living, like my dad. So, I declared as a Mechanical Engineering major for college.

            I am also a really big sports fan, particularly the big 4 sports in the US (Football, Baseball, Basketball, and Hockey). Being a little kid in San Francisco, I gravitated towards the 49ers for football, the Giants for baseball, and the Sharks for hockey. It wasn’t until I moved up to Sacramento that I became interested in basketball. I remember when I moved up here in 2002, the Sacramento Kings were serious contenders for the championship that year, so I jumped onto the bandwagon. But, I would have to say my favorite sport is Auto Racing. Whether it is NASCAR, Indy Car, Drag Racing, or some endurance race, it doesn’t matter; if it’s on television, I will find a way to watch it.

            As far as reading goes, I’ll constantly be on ESPN or Sports Illustrated, catching up on my favorite sports teams or race car drivers. However, I do read more than sports articles. Aside from important college papers and not-as-important social media posts from Facebook or whatever, I do have a few kinds of books I can read without falling asleep. I like reading biographies or fiction that isn’t too far from reality. For example, I was never a big fan of the Harry Potter series because it was too far from being a real event. Perhaps it is no coincidence that my two favorite books, Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose and The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein both fall into categories of books that I can read without falling asleep.

            The first book I can really remember being interested in was Band of Brothers. The story follows the story of the members of Easy Company, a group of paratroopers during World War II, from their military training all the way to the end of the war and their lives after the war. My interest in the book came from the TV miniseries of the same name came out.  My parents would try to set up the VCR to record all of the episodes when they first came out in 2001, but because recording stuff from TV used to be a lot more complicated than it is today, we wound up missing one or two episodes. My parents would look for the episode they had missed before whenever there was a marathon of all the episodes on, so I sat down to watch with them one time. When I saw that we had the book, I took it off the shelf, blew the dust off, and sat down to start reading the book. The more I read it, the more interested became in it, and after I had finished the book, I kept it in my room, and it became mine.

            In High School English, one of our assignments was to have a book to read throughout the semester, and write about it at the end of the semester. I picked up The Art of Racing in the Rain, since I thought from the title that it would actually be about racing. Instead, it follows one man’s struggle with his racing career and a custody battle, comparing his life to the difficulty of racing in the rain. Although it isn’t what I expected to be reading about when I picked it up, it has also found its way onto my shelf.

            Reading these books hasn’t really impacted the way that I write or communicate too much. I feel that I am really straightforward when I communicate an idea. I will usually give some background information though, before I communicate the point. But these books did sort of change my perception of the world. By putting it into racing terms, I learned from The Art of Racing in the Rain that if you stay focused and don’t let in outside distractions, you can get through the difficult parts of life. From Band of Brothers, I gathered a similar idea; that to get to a goal, you will have to overcome many different obstacles that will come your way.

            I still see reading playing a significant part in my future, both short-term and long-term. For my college education, being able to read and understand formulas and equations will be just as important as reading specifications and dimensions for designing and manufacturing a part if I want to graduate in Mechanical Engineering. If I were to get into the auto racing industry, there would definitely be a lot of reading to do. For example, reading track notes and setups from previous years and similar tracks would be an important factor in being able to set up a race car to have the best chance to win a race.