Encouraged To Discouraged

Kallie McClanahan

Encouraged to Discouraged

In life, there are three types of people: the people who enjoy reading, the people who resent reading, and the illiterate people that never had the opportunity to learn how to read. When I first learned to read when I was four years old, I was one of the many people that enjoyed reading. The fact that I had discovered this new-found talent and the pride in my mother's eyes when I read is what encouraged me. I was an unstoppable reading machine. Well, when I graduated to the third grade, my elementary school started a reading program called A.R., or Accelerated Reader. Little did I know, Accelerated Reader would change my outlook on reading in a negative way, forcing me to dread ever picking up another novel.

In the Accelerated Reader program, one was tested on the book they had just completed, and however many points one earned at the end of the test resulted in the letter grade you would receive. Before I started the program, I had to take a test to determine my reading level. My reading level was significantly high for my age, so I was forced to read the bigger, harder books or novels. I had grown accustomed to reading simple books that I could complete within in hour, so it overwhelmed me to have to read books it took days to finish reading. That was the beginning of my hatred towards reading.

After putting up with that ridiculous program for an entire year and finally moving up to the fourth grade, another set-back occurred. I was ahead of everyone in A.R. by having the most points in my class until new girl name Anna joined my class that year. She was just a normal, shy, Pentecostal girl from Grenada, Mississippi, but she could out-read anything and everything any day of the week. Anna would even bring a book to lunch and recess while everyone else, including myself, was either eating or having fun playing "tag" on the playground. Well, Anna brought out my competitive side, and I...