The Art of Literacy
“When I was a fourth-grader, I was diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma, which is an aggressive form of bone cancer.”
This was not the response I was expecting to start my interview out. I thought, “What events shaped your life?” was a relatively light, open-ended question that would help me understand my roommate better. I had been living with Gavin for the past month and I thought that I knew him pretty well. We had been friends for the past three years. We never attended the same high school, but we met through church. After vaguely getting to know him for a month, we were sent off to Mexico to build a house for a family. After a week, it felt like I had grown up with him my whole life. Two years and trips to Mexico later, our lives collided again, and we would become roommates in college. I decided to interview him to find out his personal literacy story. This made it even more shocking when I found out that he had been diagnosed with bone cancer. Thankfully, after running a few more tests, the doctors realized that their diagnosis was incorrect, and Gavin did not have cancer. However, being told that you have cancer in elementary school is a traumatic experience.
Though I did not know this fact about his life, I can see how he lives his life differently. One thing that I had noted in the time that I knew him was that he is a sponge for new information. If he does something, he goes 100%.

After learning about this life-altering event, I asked Gavin what other events happened in his childhood. He was the oldest kid out of all his siblings, three sisters. He played lots of video games with his dad growing up. In kindergarten, he started playing basketball and taking piano lessons. Gavin did not have any other kids in his neighborhood so, when he wasn’t doing these activities, he would usually be reading.
Middle school is where Gavin’s literacies would take a large improvement. He wanted to play the cello in middle school, but his mom thought the choir would be a better choice for him. Gavin found out that he enjoyed signing and continued to pursue it after high school. He also would start participating in school plays. The largest improvement in improvement in literacy Gavin would see was social literacy. Before middle school proclaimed that he did not have many friends. Moving up to the new school, Gavin was forced to talk to more people, improving his social literacy.
In high school, Gavin decided what literacies were the most important to him. This saw him quit playing basketball, something that he had been doing for most of his life. He decided that choir and acting were activities that he was more willing to use his time on. As a freshman, Gavin met one of his most important literacy sponsors.

George was a member of Gavin’s high school choir. He was three years older and took Gavin under his wing. George not only helped teach him jazz piano but also got Gavin interested in computer science. After George had graduated high school, he shortly studied computer science at the University of Washington before being hired at Microsoft. As Gavin started taking his computer science classes at Western Washington, George remained by his side. Any questions that Gavin has about his classes he could go to George and ask for help.
I want to solve problems. My interest is to be an entrepreneur. I feel like the greatest agent of change in our world right now, especially in America is through business. If a business can do something the right way, it is going to ripple through society much faster than legislature or religion on things like that because business is pretty unifying. Most people subscribe to it whether they like it or not.
Gavin enjoys solving problems and wants to leave an impact on the world. He wants to be an entrepreneur after college. Gavin believes that a master’s in computer science and a minor in business will set him up the best to achieve this. “I feel like the greatest agent of change in our world right now, especially in America is through business”. He did not want to just get a business degree because he felt like he would not have understood how companies and built. A good understanding of both ideas will set him up well in the future.
Knowledge in multiple literacies an important skill to have in understanding the world. Although, Gavin will likely not be required to play jazz piano in an entrepreneur 10 years down the road. His literacy in piano leads to building social literacies. These literacies will be used in everyday life. As we branch out and try to learn different literacies, we learn more about ourselves. We learn different ways to express ourselves that might resonate better with different people. The more literacies that we understand, the better we can communicate with our world.
1st photo: https://it.eurosport.com/
2nd photo: https://fineartamerica.com/
