Zach Nielsen’s Totally Bogus Background

My background actually isn’t that bogus, I just liked the alliteration and reference to old movies. I guess I’m like anyone else, a malleable human cask that has been influenced by his relatively easy going past. I came from a poorish family, that struck gold in a sense as I got older, and never really had struggles like some might. Thankfully, this lead to my massive exposure to video games and similar media, aka anime. I guess video games and anime kinda influenced my everything I want in life in some way. I used to be much more creative and draw a ton, and dreamed to become some how involved in video games. But….I took a real look at my skills and I saw no future in that so I looked at my other options. English was always my least favorite class growing up. I was always so much better at literally every subject that I’m still sometimes confused why I am an English major. However, I kinda always knew I wanted to teach. In high school I was a math tutor and I felt like I was pretty good at it, but math sucks, and it’s totally boring, but this experience kinda made me lean toward being a teacher of something. While going to Butte College I found that something! I took a intro to Japanese class because all my friends took it the semester before me, and I could use their books. I was kinda in it just to understand anime, but it turned out that I just loved learning it. It was the only class I looked forward to and I wish I still had some I could take now. I kinda thought to myself, “Okay Zach, you like anime…and video games…and Japanese…what do these have in common?” Well lemme shed some light, JAPAN! It hit me like a truck, which i now think is a pretty sad simile, but none the less, I realized something I could do! Teach English to Japanese folk! I figured since I liked learning Japanese so much, I could assume that someone in Japan felt the same. Thus I studied abroad, realized Japan is freaking awesome, and now I’m set to teach there!

 

Well that’s more of a bio than most of my friends know about me, but what the heck. I like my background. Well the next thing to discuss is what I want from this class. Now to be honest, I had no idea what this class was about at all. I just saw I needed it for the TESOL cert., and was enough to sign me up. However, this seems like the coolest class I’ve signed up for yet. I’m not much of a dedicated student, for I think that actual application of my knowledge to helping others has little to do with my knowledge of say how to read and understand Chaucer. Which is why I am super pumped for this class, because I tend to excel at the actual tutoring and teaching aspect of things versus my ability to make arguments on literature that I despise. So I guess I am just super stoked to actual tutor, which I feel like if college is to prep you for your job you would do more of this kind of work, but It hasn’t worked out that way thus far. Which Is again, why I am excited for this class.

 

Literacy in my mind is one of those words like “reading” or “terrorism.” They kind of don’t have agreed upon meanings. Well they do in a sense, besides terrorism, but it kind of is up the the person using the word to define it. Like in my mind literacy applies to all things in life that can be understood, thus you are literate in somethings, and not in others. But I have a feeling that most people exclude the word to writing and reading scholarly subjects. Like I know for a fact, I am more literate at reading Yugioh cards than anyone you know, but I could care less about reading some early English literature, and therefor be less literate in the subject. So with that said, I find myself lacking in many contemporary forms of literacy. I do not really use social media besides Facebook, which I hardly use, compared to most. So when people talk about Instagram and all those popular things, I tend to have no idea what they are talking about. In the same way I really do not follow many English majors on what books they like because I haven’t really found books that I liked, until recently. So in a lot of ways, I feel less literate then my peers, but I make up for it in anime, video games, and skateboarding. I know so much about these three pillars of my core being that in out weighs in my mind what I feel to be lacking. So in an average day I expose myself to reading subtitles in an anime or a few, to video game knowledge via patch notes or something like a youtube video describing new found techniques, and I skateboarded my whole life so I am well versed in the terminology of the skateboard world. I recently started reading books, which is new to me, but I love it. I tend to read Japanese modern novels, and Kurt Vonnegut who I find to be absolutely hilarious. I write absolutely nothing. I do not consider texting to be involved in this, because in this day in age texting is almost a new way of speaking which I would not consider in the realm of literacy. Other than that I write few times a week for school. I kinda felt the way Szwed felt about literacy before reading his article. There are many forms of it, and it is something that needs to be questioned in order to properly judge people on it.

So with that being said, thanks for listening. I am a big nerd. I like things more than English, but I can use English as my trade so I’m gonna use it. Hope you kinda followed this, a bottle of wine helped write it so it sounded “real.”