Many thanks to Dr. Cole and the English faculty for this opportunity to share some of my feelings on the study of literature. Although, those of you who have had me in class know, I always manage to insert myself into all of my writing assignments.

I learned to read while sitting on my mother's lap – just like Scout in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird – as she read newspapers and romance novels aloud. Mamma and I started this weekly ritual when I was about four years old, after I could recite my "ABCs" without hesitation. Mamma would read slowly, pointing at the words on the page as she went, saying bigger words more slowly as she pointed to each syllable. I could already recognize small words like "cat" and "table" and "moon" because the walls of my room were adorned with education art connected with favorite nursery rhymes and fairy tales. I may have been a precocious child – I don't know, but my mother insists I was – but the day I made the connection between the letters I'd mastered, the things on my walls, the words my mother spoke and the things on the page, I knew in my little girl's mind that my world had changed forever, and I became a reading fool. I read cereal boxes, canned goods, even the labels inside my clothes. Never again would I have to depend on someone else to describe the antics of Dick and Jane or decipher the ingredients listed on a jar of peanut butter. And I'll never forget the day my mother and I walked down to the local branch of the Denver Public Library to get me my very own library card. I remember back then, the cards were made of kind of slate material that had a hole punched in it so I could wear it on a string around my neck – it was a status symbol!

Anyway, from that day forward, I would try, usually in vain, to share with the other kids all the wonderful things I'd learned in the latest book I'd read. I learned about the mystery of the Rosetta stone and the power of Greek, Roman and Norse gods and goddesses. I learned that "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." When I read From the Mixed up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E.L. Konigsburg, I learned that running away from an unpleasant situation usually doesn't serve you. In Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy, I learned that even though you might hurt someone's feelings by something you said or did, you really could redeem yourself, IF you really wanted to. I always had a suggested reading list for friends, although that changed to a suggested list of Lennon and McCartney songs during my teen years, you know how teenagers are. To this day, whenever friends say they don't understand why she did this or why he did that, I usually suggest a novel, a film, a poem or a song that I think might help then understand themselves and others a bit better.

When I came to ACC about four years ago, my plan was to get my AAS in Accounting in minimal time, then find a position with a non-profit organization – get in, get out, nobody gets hurt. That isn't exactly what happened. What happened was that I was seduced – seduced by the siren's song of literature.

For each accounting class I too, I somehow found myself enrolled in two or more English or literature classes. For every hour spent grudgingly working out problems in cost-volume-profit analysis, I spent five or six hours gleefully polishing an essay for Comp II or a research paper for Brit Lit. I thoroughly enjoyed the process of discovering and understanding myself through the process of studying literature – much more than I enjoyed making columns and rows of numbers balance. Finally, I did the only thing I could do: I decided to become an English teacher.

What this means to me is that I've chosen to try to help others discover and understand themselves through the study of literature. And although I've decided not to pursue a career as an accountant – don't get me wrong, I'm getting that AAS degree before I transfer – I don't see the study of literature as irrelevant for someone who chooses to become an accountant or a mother or an engineer or a bricklayer or a lawyer. I believe everyone can and should make a place for literature because no matter what you choose to do with your life, you will do it with other people. The study of literature is the study of people – how they think, why they think what they think, why they do the things they do. And in learning about the motivations of others, you can't help but learn about yourself.

I believe in literature. I believe in the study of literature. I especially believe that the study of literature is the study of ourselves, because literature shows us that we all have the same joys, fears and desires, and, more often than not, we all have them for the same reasons.

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