For the last blog, I decided to talk about my love for reading. As long as I can remember I have always loved reading. From my earliest memory, my mom always read to me. I had bookcases throughout my room and in my playroom. Books were always the gifts I was given for birthdays and Christmas. It wasn’t until about 5th grade when I started to really get into reading. We had these tests we needed to take which were called Accelerated Reading Tests. Basically, you would just read a book, and take a test on it for comprehension. To me, these tests were always sooo easy. I could read 500-page books and still get a 100 on the test. I finally realized how much reading meant to me, and I started reading at home in my free time. I liked horror books the most, but I was definitely a Junie B. Jones girl at one point in my life. As years went by, my love only continued to grow. Most recently, my favorite series of books was the After series. I started them during the year of the COVID pandemic, and no joke, I finished each book, which there was a total of 5 with about 700 pages each, in a week. Every waking moment I had, I spent it reading. This contributed to a lot of my life now in numerous ways. To start, I gained so much basic vocabulary and understanding of how “words” worked. I could identify tones and settings which I used in required writing for my classes. Additionally, I learned how to develop an attachment to a character. I could sympathize with someone who was made out to be “bad” in the story. I think that was always my favorite thing about reading. The attachment and love I developed for each character. Comparing books to movies, I always say such a drastic change in how connected I felt to the characters. I am a very emotional person, and reading always brought this out in me. While in college, the type of mandatory readings are not exactly romance and horror, enjoying reading definitely made these much less of a hassle. It is always such a great feeling to have something stay consistent in your life, and this is what reading has been for me. I can think about reading and relate it from the earliest time I remember to the most recent. My life is constantly changing and reading allows me to settle back and escape into a different place than where I am. I hope that my desire to read stays with me for the rest of my life. I hope it can help me get through the toughest parts as well as be with me while I am enjoying my best. It is definitely a big part of who I am today, and for that, I am very grateful. It helps with my ever-growing mind, and my love for education. I’m so sorry for the roughness of these last two blogs! I tried my best, but I’m sure they were a little rough to get through.