Girls typically grow up playing dolls and trying on their mom’s clothes and makeup. I grew up reading books. It’s kind of simple really. I idolized my mom, I still do, but to me, my mom wasn’t known for the way she looked. I remember the number of books that she read.
My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was about six years old. This is where her obsession with romance novels began. With nothing else to do during her chemo sessions, she just read. Hours upon hours just men and women falling in love with each other. However, my mom’s passion for reading stayed with her after she finished her chemo and radiation.
She read whenever she had free time. I would walk into my parents’ bedroom on Saturday mornings to find my dad watching tv and my mom reading her latest book. This is how my fascination began.
I started small, obviously, because I was young at the time. I would read Dr. Seuss books like The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham. I also read a bunch, and I mean A LOT, of Dick and Jane stories. I had a whole six-leveled shelf filled with books. I started filling them with the Percy Jackson series and The Magic Treehouse books too.
Books became an everyday activity for me.
I would get to my parent’s job from school and then read. I would continue reading once we got home. You can see that there was a lot of reading going on during that time. You can assume that my grades were not doing the best because of all this reading.
My grades struggled in fifth grade because I was obsessed with reading. I quickly realized, after a stern discussion with my mom, that I needed to put school first and put reading on the back burner. I don’t think that I’ve ever brought up my grades that fast before. My grades bounced back to A’s and B’s before the end of the quarter.
I gradually began to read more complex novels as I got into middle school. However, I was instantly drawn to romance and fantasy novels by seventh grade. I downloaded so many books on to my iPhone, so I would read between classes, during lunch or after I finished my homework. And so, this became my life. And it still is.
I knew I wanted to become an English major when I started high school. My favorite class was always English (even though it was incredibly stressful at times) and my passion for literature never left me.
It was my escape from reality. I would curl up on the sofa in my house and read for hours. One time I got so caught up in a book that I went to bed at 4:30 a.m., knowing full well that I needed to get up at 5:30 a.m. for school the following day. I would finish books within a day or, at max, a day and a half. It was a good thing I got a job my senior year. I would just inhale the plot and the character dynamics and all of the drama.
I didn’t know what I wanted to do with an English major, but I knew that my future would revolve around it. Literature completely fascinated me. Think about how the sentence structure could affect the way someone reacts to the dialogue between characters. Or how the way the author is specific on certain details in the setting that makes them important to a character’s mood. It was a new world that I readily immersed myself into.
Before starting college, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to do something in the writing aspect or the literature aspect of English. I figured the courses and internships I take these next four years would show me the right path for me. I choose writing, for now. Maybe down the line, spring semester of my senior year, I’ll change my mind (which is possible seeing that I am the most indecisive person I know).
I would like to work in a magazine, not quite sure which one. Hopefully, there’s one near my hometown because I love my family too much to leave them behind. I know I’ll probably start out at the bottom of the food chain and that’s fine with me. I just want my foot in the door. I want to gradually climb and, with any luck, become an editor of a specific department.
