In the 21st century, the function of reading has began to be geared more towards education rather than enjoyment and that is shown through the value of reading due to the decrease in children reading books for enjoyment rather than having to read for school. There are plenty of novels, plays, poetry, etc. still has the ability to transport someone to a different world and spark that reader’s love for reading but other types of media and technology, like video games and phones, have slowly began to overtake the traditional literature and encourage kids to no longer read. The change from literature to technolgy has been shown in different studies of the behaviors of children and teens. An example of this is, from the article “The Real Reason Kids Aren’t Reading More”, is that by the year 2021, social media usage in tweens and teens have rose drastically, to where tweens spend five and a half hours a day on social media while teens spend eight and a half hours on social media. This shows that technology has slowly become a more prevelent type of media in children which, depending on how it is used, can prevent a child from gaining the reading skills they would otherwise obtain if they were reading some type of traditional literature.

Source: https://www.edweek.org/leadership/the-real-reasons-kids-arent-reading-more/2022/03

Throughout my life, I have always loved to write. In fourth grade, I would write fictitious stories in a binder and pass them around the class for all my friends to read. They would beg me for new chapters, and I loved that feeling. I built a community among a group of friends and bonded in silly literature. In high school, I was a sufficient writer. I strived in my classes that required essays. My fictitious stories in the binder throughout high school turned into daily non-fiction journaling. I have archives of my 16-year-old thoughts preserved in thick 6-dollar notebooks from the drugstore. These pieces of writing are my most priced; even if they are immature thoughts about attractions and geometry, they’re mine. Unfortunately, in college, I started to despise writing. I received my first “D” on an essay. It would take me hours to write a paragraph. I turned in every writing assignment late or accepted the failures and incompletes. I developed a mental block, and the journals that would take me three months to fill started to sit on my desk for years. I am not the same person I once was. I am constantly reminded of my old habits, and I have tried to be the 16-year-old writing in study hall or the fourth grader staying up all night working on a “novel.” Instead, I am learning about literature and, in turn, will learn how to be an author again. A great author is developed through reading and understanding. I hope to fall back in love with writing.

Hello, I’m Emily, and I study the human experience. Humans are a social species; from the moment we’re born, our minds are instinctively straining to communicate. Communication is our survival mechanism. It is so steeped in our bloodstream that we long to communicate even with those we’ve never met. As Shakespeare famously put it in his 81st sonnet, “When all the breathers of this world are dead; you still shall live, such virtue hath my pen” (Lines 12-13). We grasp to be understood by those we are separated from by endless time and space. We invented legacies and started feverishly writing, painting, sculpting, making in order to build our own. 

When it comes to words, I’ve always been an exemplary student. I’m entranced by the sound of them, by the music they make. They lodge themselves in my head, and the only way to get them out is to speak or write them, to visualize their shape and hear their sound. This love of words drew me to study the many ways words can carry meaning, even covertly; how they can say one thing and whisper another when you look closely. When it comes to communicating the human experience, one tends not to describe it simply. There is nothing simple about the human experience. There is nothing simple about each and every one of our lives. So, in most cases, those who wish to be truly understood must package meaning with wordcraft. I decipher literary techniques so that those who pour their life into writing can be understood. 

That is literature. Literature is the collective human attempt to be known and understood. It’s a work of art one makes with the intent of communicating their worldview and history. This is what distinguishes it from, say, an instructional booklet: the booklet has a purpose, but that purpose is not for one to understand something about the author or others or even themselves. The message must be about what it means to be a human. The folktale of Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf, for example, passes on the feeling of being vulnerable, of being prey. Someone – rather, many someones – spun that tale one day to impart that shared experience to those who haven’t felt it, and thus a literary tradition was born. My work is to dissect literature like this to uncover what it culturally represents. I spend my time trying to know how literature connects us, what we might gain from it. I listen to the music of words and look for patterns woven in the letters that suggest there is more beneath the surface of the page.