Once I got to university I thought I was the s**t (pardon my asterisks). However, my confidence in my literacy soon deflated after a series of abysmal results which shattered my belief I knew everything there was to know about everything (a hard thing to do if you can believe it). The literacy required by university is vastly different to that required in High School. This is a sentiment mirrored by the work of Gee (cited in Anstey and Bull, 2004) in which it states 'not all students arrive at school (or university) with the same literacies and approaches to learning' (p.12). I can now see that my literacy skills stopped developing at a personal literacy level and I agree with the idea that my literacy did not match that required of university. However, my vigorous agreement did not increase my marks unfortunately. What I had to do was learn to critically analyse texts- I went from enjoying fairy tales to thinking of them as misogynistic oppressive tales of sexism- basically, I lost my innocence (okay I might be being melodramatic but you get my point). In my Modern History major I went from credits to distinctions as a result of my new found ability to analyse texts, an important skill in history- a skill afforded to me by university and my new found appreciation of the four resources model (Luke and Freebody, 1990).
A quick aside before I leave you for another week- I want to leave you with an advertisement I used to think was quiet cute- small boy covered in dirt to small boy nice and clean with the help of 'Pears' soap- however the new critical Jessica is appalled by the inherent racism and eugenic principles demonstrated in the advertisement- ta ta
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