Introductory Post

Hey everyone, my name is Rob Bloom, and if my personality was a picture, this is it. I am currently a senior here and my major is exercise science. If I am being honest, I took this class because it is fulfilling my tier 2 and oral communication requirements, and Professor Rosen came highly recommended by an academic advisor. Some of my interests include working out, football, combat sports, and lifestyle. I would say that always looking for a way to improve my lifestyle and finding out the best ways to optimize my life is my biggest hobby. 

My dog Hershey

I come from a single-parent household with no siblings, so a lot of learning was done on my own. If I had to go back and think about when I first remember starting to be literate, it would be when I was in kindergarten learning how to read. My teacher taught us how to sound out words, read left to right, and how to properly annunciate. While I don't remember much, I vividly remember each child had to read a book in front of the class throughout the school year with a parent present, and the teacher told me prior that the book I chose might be a little too advanced for me but I decided to do it anyways. It turns out she was right, I could barely read the pages of the book as I could not pronounce the words at the time. I just remember feeling completely embarrassed in front of the class as they were laughing at me and feeling dumb with my mom there. Instead of crying like most kids would have done, my mom and I went home, got a different book, and practiced until I got it perfect because I was determined to show everyone I could do it. Since I was in aftercare for hours after school, I would also practice on my own and read it back to myself over and over again and whenever I got home I would practice more and get corrected if need be. A few weeks later I went back and read every page correctly with full confidence, and I just remember seeing the smiles on the faces of my mom and teacher. From there, I was encouraged to try and learn more and keep teaching myself new things. 

Throughout my youth, I continued to learn and develop different interests and would pretty much indulge in everything. All in a day I would go to school, play a sport, do homework or read, and watch something with sports, superheroes, or SpongeBob in it, you could say I was very well-versed. But, my biggest frustration was if I did not understand something when school was over, it was hard to get help for it. I would go to aftercare after school for about 3 hours and the people who ran it would not help with homework at all, so most of it was incorrect. When aftercare was over I would either have a long car ride home in the dark with traffic, or have to go to either football, basketball, or baseball practice. By the time I was home, I was exhausted and so was whoever picked me up that day so I would not want to look at the homework I already completed, and neither would my parents. It was extremely frustrating because I got bad grades as a kid, but as I got older I would teach myself things more and more and now I realize that's how I learn best. 

Coming from my perspective now, I would not change the experiences I had because if it were not for that, I would not be the self-sufficient learner that I am today. It might've been discouraging always feeling a little confused in school growing up, but if I always had someone helping me I wouldn't know how to problem solve on my own and that is something I am grateful for. I continue to be literate today by continuing my education, learning more about the things that interest me on my own, and talking to others who are different from me to learn more from someone else's experiences. Speaking to other people in my opinion is the best way to not only learn but to stay literate because there is always something we can learn from someone else. I continue to be my own motivation to keep on improving my literacy in all aspects of life. I would like to go through life continuing to learn, and also teach others.