Sherman Alexie's Effect On My Life

Growing up in a small town, everyone knew everyone. You cannot go to the store without running into one of your grandparent’s friends or a coworker of your parents. Before you even introduced yourself the person you were talking to already knew many details about you. Now this can get extremely annoying but nothing is as annoying as when your teachers would have set expectations for you because they had taught your older siblings that had come before you. My two older sisters were not only great students but also great athletes; unfortunately for me this means that my teachers and coaches compared me to them constantly. This effected my education and how I chose to live my life because I started making decisions based on what I wanted not …show more content…
Instead I spent many hours teaching myself the material just to prove my worth. The way I taught myself reminded me a lot of Sherman Alexie when he wrote about his experiences growing up. Sherman Alexie was really interested in literature and picked up reading from a very young age. But, before he was a famous poet, Sherman taught himself how to read. He explains his learning process by telling the story of “reading” a comic book. “I look at the narrative above the picture. I cannot read the words, but I assume it tells me that Superman is breaking down the door”.() When I was reading this essay this line stuck out to me .I related to this because in school when I was not sure what the material meant I would put context clues together in order to figure it out and this is how I learned the …show more content…
I pushed to be as involved as I possibly could. I joined numerous clubs and took many leadership roles. Basically, whatever my sisters didn’t do I decided to try. This not only helped me develop into a leader but it also let me try new things and become my own person based on things I was interested in rather than what people thought I would be interested in based on my sisters likes and dislikes. I appreciated the awards and recognitions that I received because it meant that I had been successful on my own and I didn’t need my sisters names to help me get to where I wanted to be. Eventually my teachers started to recognize me as my own person and stopped comparing me to my sisters. They began to realize that I shouldn’t be given judgments based off what I couldn’t do like my sisters. They realized that although I couldn’t do things quite like my sisters could, I could excel in other