Cantrell 1
Nick Cantrell
Brittany Cotrill
Literacy Essay
2/18/09
Baseball & Literacy
As I finish my last semester here at Bowling Green State University its clear to me how much this university has had an effect on me. I truly believe that I’m now a better person as whole than when I first enrolled here. Baseball gave me the opportunity to come to this university because I would not have been able to afford tuition without a scholarship. The university and being part of the baseball team have developed my literacy’s in a variety of ways. It helped me develop literacy skills such as listening, budgeting time and communicating effectively with people.
School was never my favorite place to be, but the baseball diamond was. This is why I accepted a scholarship to play for the falcons. It’s hard for me to imagine that I could have gone to college without the help of baseball because of financial problems and lack of motivation. Baseball seemed to solve both of these problems and hence developed my literacy’s without me even realizing it.
Listening is a key component in almost any environment for people. Most people believe that they are good listeners when in fact they are terrible listeners. I was example of this and found it out early in my collegiate career. I would hear everything a person said, but I was not actually listening and thus never took anything in. It took me a long time to get the hang of this but I finally did after a great deal of practice. In school you have to listen or otherwise your grades will suffer. I learned that making mental notes on key words or even writing down key words helped me comprehend the information that was being given to me. Baseball also was a motivational force behind developing listening skills because making a mental error meant that I would pay for by doing extra conditioning. I discovered by keeping eye contact with the speaker at all the times you concentrate more and understand what is being told to you. Listening is highly underrated when it is compared to other literacy’s. Listening gives people the ability to understand and comprehend what others are trying to portray.
Being a responsible person ties into being a literate person in a few ways. People are not born responsible, they learn to be responsible over years of practice. One element of being responsible is knowing how to budget your time wisely. In college there were many activities going on such as going to class, baseball practices, and socializing with friends. My first couple of semesters were a big adjustment for me because I did not budget my time very well. Prioritizing what is most important can be difficult because its normally things that you do not like doing such as school work. Time management can be the most useful skill in a person’s life because it is unlikely that a person will have only one event to give their time to. This is true for both a college student and a person who has a career in almost any field. The best way that I can explain how I learned this literacy here at Bowling Green was through trial and error. I still make mistakes by not allowing myself enough time for projects and other events, but the key is that I learn from these mistakes.
Communicating effectively has been the literacy that has helped me the most throughout my collegiate career. It is also the literacy that I have developed the most. This shouldn’t be a surprise because people tend to develop skills that they need the most. Communicating can be verbal or nonverbal and it is important to be successful at both. In both cases it is important to know who your audiences are. For instance it is much different talking to a friend when compared to talking to a coach. Knowing what language is appropriate for everyday situations is a key component of being a good communicator. It is also very important to be an effective communicator when writing anything. Like verbal communication a person must know who their audience is and what they are trying to relay to them.
The university has taught me a great deal about myself and the literacy’s that I possess. I have learned that being literate means many different things. It’s not always just about reading and writing, although these two things are very important. Having any skills that a person is not naturally born with can be considered literacy. I just hope to further develop my skills and literacy’s as my life goes on.