When I think about fantasy, my first instinct is to imagine dragons, knights, or epic novels that stretch for thousands of pages---not a very unique thought, I know. But what surprises me is that my own entry point into fantasy was not a book at all. It was Prodigy, a math game I played religiously in elementary school on my school-issued Chromebook. I remember logging in before, during, and after school to solve math problems so that I could fight monsters with spells.

(An image of what Prodigy looks like! Screenshot from Prodigy Education Inc.)

It might sound silly to say a math game was my introduction to fantasy, but it was. Prodigy let me step into the role of a chosen hero, wander through magical worlds, and battle strange creatures. The catch was that every spell required a math question to be answered correctly first, and I only won battles if I answered most questions correctly. In hindsight, it was a clever balance between education and imagination. At the time, it felt like an actual quest, and the tradeoff of one math problem per spell cast didn't feel too bad either (I also do like to think that my younger self was pretty good at math.) I wasn’t just learning fractions. I was casting fireballs, defeating monsters, and collecting gear that made me stronger.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that Prodigy shaped my idea of what fantasy could be. It was daily, interactive, and personal. Books or films asked me to observe. Prodigy asked me to participate. I logged in not because I loved math but because I wanted to feel powerful in a world that ran on magic.

Harry Potter, Ghibli, and Star Wars on the Side

Of course, Prodigy was not the only fantasy I encountered growing up. Like so many others, I spent time on the Harry Potter website, which at the time was called Pottermore and is now Wizarding World. I remember clicking through to be sorted into a house, collecting digital wands, and answering trivia that made me feel part of something larger. The site was my first taste of how fantasy could extend beyond books into online communities.

(My patronus, an Eagle Owl. Users can receive their Patronus---an animal-shaped white spirit guardian---after taking a quiz on Wizarding World. Screenshot from Harry Potter Inc.)

Then there were the Studio Ghibli films, which gave me a completely different vision of fantasy. Movies like Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro blurred the line between the ordinary and the magical. Unlike Prodigy, Ghibli never rushed to reward you with power or points. Instead, it slowed you down. It showed me that fantasy could be quiet and reflective, almost like a mirror for the real world. I think Ghibli was the first time I realized fantasy could carry messages about nature, family, and grief.

(Calcifer, from Howl's Moving Castle, my favorite character from the Ghibli franchise. Gif from Spirited Away, from Studio Ghibli.)

Finally, there was Star Wars. As a kid raised in an immigrant household, I'd only heard fleeting remarks about it at school. My knowledge of the franchise was few and far between---before actually sitting down to watch the movies on my own time in recent years, I only knew Princess Leia had a unique hairstyle and "Luke... I am your father" was quoted by my peers for some reason. Growing up, I thought of it as just an epic space adventure. In my senior year of high school, I watched the entire movie series, and the layers of political commentary were suddenly apparent: empires and rebellions, questions about power and resistance, and how entire societies rise and fall. What started as a celebrity crush on Hayden Christensen (who played the main protagonist, Anakin Skywalker) became my introduction to thinking about how stories reflect real-world struggles. Even now, my mind can't help but draw parallels to Star Wars whenever I go to educate myself on United States politics.

All of these mattered, but they were occasional events. A movie night. A weekend binge. Even Star Wars, though pretty monumental in how I see society and politics now, was a phase once (I still have a giant Revenge of the Sith poster in my dorm). Prodigy was different. I was in that world practically every day in my tween years.

What I Liked & What I Didn’t

My taste in fantasy has always been uneven. I like when stories feel immersive without requiring me to memorize encyclopedias of lore. Prodigy appealed because it was light and straightforward. You did not need to know centuries of backstory to cast a spell. You just needed to know how to add or subtract.

I disliked when fantasy became too heavy with details. Some books felt like they demanded too much from me before I could even start enjoying them. I also never loved the endless repetition of “the chosen one” plotline, where one character is destined to save the world while everyone else watches. Maybe that is why I liked Prodigy more than I expected. I got to be the chosen one, at least on my screen, and the quest was simple: do the math, win the battle.

Why Prodigy Stuck With Me

When I look back, Prodigy was more than a game. It made learning feel like an adventure. It showed me that fantasy can turn ordinary tasks into quests. Instead of drills and worksheets, I was saving the world through multiplication. That lesson has stayed with me. Even now, I catch myself treating tasks like quests, as if finishing an assignment or reaching a goal is its own kind of monster to defeat.

Compare that to Harry Potter. I spent hours on the official website, taking quizzes and reading lore, but even then I never felt as immersed as other fans. I enjoyed the surface-level fun, like choosing a wand, or getting sorted into a house. But the deeper I went, the more it felt like homework. The novels were long, the details endless, and unless you were completely devoted, it was easy to feel left out of conversations. That kind of all-or-nothing immersion didn’t work for me.

Star Wars fell into a similar category. The films were entertaining, and later I appreciated the political commentary they carried, but the sheer size of the franchise was overwhelming. Extended lore, spinoffs, games, endless debates about canon... it felt like too much to keep up with. I liked the big-picture themes of resistance and power, but the fantasy itself never pulled me in the way Prodigy did because it required more energy than I wanted to give.

Even Studio Ghibli, which is closest to what I still love today, carried a different kind of weight. Films like My Neighbor Totoro or Spirited Away invited me into quiet, magical spaces, but they didn’t linger in my everyday life the way Prodigy did. Watching a film is a contained experience; once the credits rolled, the fantasy ended. Prodigy was ongoing. Every time I logged on, the game asked me to step back into a role and take action. It blurred the line between play and work in a way that no movie could.

Harry Potter taught me about friendship. Ghibli taught me to find beauty in the small details of life. Star Wars taught me to think about politics and power. Prodigy was different because it was persistent, and it turned math---routine, or even boring---into something I wanted to return to every day. I didn’t have to chase that immersion because it was built into my schoolwork. That blending of reality and fantasy made it feel less like a story I consumed and more like a world I was living inside. Prodigy taught me to see math as magic. Out of all of them, Prodigy was the one that blurred the line between school and fantasy in a way that made me want to come back day after day.

Closing

When I was young, I had never been into reading. Although it’s difficult to remember exactly what was going through my head way back then, I’d imagine it has to do with how banal and dull the typical book written for second-graders is. So I went through most of elementary school viewing reading books as, at best, tolerable, only reading as much as my school required me to.

However, one fateful day in 5th grade, that all changed. My mother called me to her room, and I sat in a chair nervously, wondering why I had been summoned. That was when I noticed the tower of books behind her on the table. Although I had never read them, I recognized them as the Harry Potter series (I didn’t live under a rock). It was composed of 7 books, each, to my young eyes, seemingly thick enough to stop a bullet. Stacked up in a tower as they currently were, I couldn’t help but feel intimidated. Noticing the fear beginning to form in my eyes, my mom quickly began her pitch.

Cognizant of how overwhelming the concept of having to read the entire series would be to me, my mother told me I was only being required to read the first book in the series(although, obviously, the idea was for me to get hooked on the first book and willingly read the others. To show solidarity with me and motivate me, my mom (who also had never particularly enjoyed reading) promised she would read every one of the books that I read.

Our business together concluded, I set off back to my room, sat in my chair, and begrudgingly prepared to begin my attempt to summit the imposing mountain of words and pages that was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. I got comfortable in my chair, cracked open the book, and began to read. The next thing I knew, it was several hours later and my parents were calling me for dinner. I then found myself making two unexpected observations: 1) I had made far more progress than I had anticipated, making what I had thought would be a week or two’s worth of progress in only hours, and 2) Despite the mouthwatering smells emanating from the kitchen I and the audible growling of my stomach, I didn’t want to put the book down to join my family for dinner. That was the moment I realized I was hooked.

At some point the next day, I returned Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone to my mom and asked for the next one. Upon hearing that I had already finished the entire book, her face lit up in a mixture of shock, joy, and pride. This was, of course, immediately followed by a high five and a hug. She handed me the next book in the series, but before I left, I made sure to remind her that she was now obligated to read the first book.

Over the course of the next week and a half, I was a slave to J.K. Rowling’s 7 book series. At every opportunity, I was reading a Harry Potter book: in the morning before school, in the car, during lunch, during recess, after school. By Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, I was trying to secretly read them in my bed in the middle of the night, way past my bedtime (although my dad caught me in the act a day or two later, and for a while after would confiscate whatever book I was reading right before bedtime to prevent me from doing so again).

The end of that week and a half wasn’t the end of my reading spree, however. Within days of me having completed the entirety of the Harry Potter series, my mom came home with books rented from the library to help sate my newly unquenchable hunger for books. From reading the Harry Potter series to fulfill her promise to me, my Mom even developed a taste for reading. Over the course of the next few years, I read book after book, series after series, at many points spending more time reading than was probably healthy for me. Thanks to all that reading, however, my reading comprehension and vocabulary shot through the roof, and I attained what was considered a college-level vocabulary by 7th grade.

Two Gold Rings

When you are five years old you don’t really understand the concept of what death was or what happens. All I know is that on August 8, 2002, I was at the beach and was dressed to go out when my mom and my aunt walked into the kitchen with tears rolling down their faces. My dad sent me to my room where I angrily waited to go down to the beach when a few minutes later my dad walked in and told me that there had been an accident and that I needed to get dressed because we were going home. After that moment the day was pretty much a blur except for when I got to this big old musty building where my entire family was waiting and crying when a man came out and they told my dad and mom to go inside with my grandparents and to leave the kids outside. A few minutes later I remember everyone coming back crying even harder than they were before they left. I wanted to know what was going on but no one would tell me. It wasn’t till a few hours later that my parents had told me that my Uncle Carlos, the most amazing uncle that I had just seen a few days before, had died in a motorcycle accident.

A few years after my uncle had passed away, my grandmother started wearing this necklace. It was two gold rings on a gold chain one just big enough for the smaller one to fit inside the bigger one. It was then that I realized that those rings were my aunt and uncles wedding bands. Those two gold bands that once were on my aunt and uncle’s hands were now on a chain around her neck where they were supposed to stay until the day that she died. I didn’t know it then but those rings were going to be eventually passed down to me.

When I reached the age of fifteen I learned two very important things.  These two things were that when my grandmother passed away I would be given those rings since I was the closest to my Aunt and Uncle. When I heard that I immediately started to cry because at the same time I also learned that my uncle was not who I thought he was. I learned that the happy person that would always bring us toys and would make us laugh was a very dark and sad person. The day I found out that I was going to be passed down those two gold rings on the gold chain, I also found out that my uncle was very depressed. My aunt had died from breast cancer the year before and to help numb the gut wrenching pain that my uncle felt from her death he decided to turn to drugs, and that when he died he was under the influence of several drugs. It was a mix of drugs, poor decision-making, and mechanical failure with his bike that day that caused him to die.

Ever since the day that I found out that my uncle was a on drugs when he died I swore to myself again that I would never associate myself with it or ever put myself in a situation where I was around it. As of today, I have continued to keep that promise and will continue to keep that promise until the day that I die. As I went through high school I continued to find out more information about what my uncle was really like, by hearing all the stories that my mom would talk about from her childhood up and till before my aunt died.

Although my uncle was not the person he once was when he died I still would have been proud to wear those two gold rings around my neck, because in my eyes he will always be that person that when we were having a bad day would run out to Toys R Us and would bring a toy to our house. He was the person that on Easter Sunday, after dying our eggs he would break one open and would put ketchup on it and while I made faces he would say “Sweet Pea, don’t judge it till you try it”. He was the person that I would always hug first when I went to family events, and even today I am pretty sure I still would.

When my little sister turned 15 my grandmother gave her a little box that contained something very special. It was a rose gold necklace with a rose on the pendant. My uncle gave it to my grandma just two weeks before he died, and she gave it to my little sister on her fifteenth birthday. None of us were expecting what we were about to see. When my mom saw it after it was opened she started to tear up a little because she realized what it was. That is when my grandmother told us what it was that caused everyone in the room to go completely silent and start to tear up a little bit. That same year but just a month later, my older sister graduated from high school, and when she got to the present my grandparents were giving her, my mom told us all to look at my older sister because we would want to see this. We all turned around and stared at my older sister who was quite freaked out at this point and that is when my grandma gripped my grandpa’s hand and waited to see the reaction of my older sister. When she opened the box my older sister started to cry, in the middle of the restaurant, she did not say anything she just got up and hugged my grandparents who were sitting quietly and were tearing up. The reason they were crying is because they had just given my older sister a necklace that was given to my uncle when he graduated from high school.

Then, the unthinkable happened, when I graduated from high school it was a day full of happiness and emotions. I had finally graduated high school and I was feeling on top of this world. Following pictures after the ceremony we drove downtown to the place where we would have a celebratory dinner with my parents, my two sisters, my uncle, and of course my grandparents. After ordering our food, it was time to open my presents. I started with the presents from my parents, then my sisters, then my uncle, and then finally with my grandparents present to me. Nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to see. Once again my mom called everyone’s attention and told everyone  to watch. I slowly opened the box kind of nervous about what I was about to see. Once more my grandmother gripped my grandpa’s hand, and I noticed that my mom was already crying and when I finally got the box open, I looked down and saw something I thought I wouldn’t see for a really long time. In that tiny box were two gold rings on a gold chain that used to hang around my grandmothers neck.

                                               Two Gold Rings

When you are five years old you don’t really understand the concept of what death was or what happens. All I know is that on August 8, 2002, I was at the beach and was dressed to go out when my mom and my aunt walked into the kitchen with tears rolling down their faces. My dad sent me to my room where I angrily waited to go down to the beach when a few minutes later my dad walked in and told me that there had been an accident and that I needed to get dressed because we were going home. After that moment the day was pretty much a blur except when I got to this big old musty building where my entire family was waiting and crying when a man came out and they told my dad and mom to go inside with my grandparents and to leave us outside.  A few minutes later I remember everyone coming back crying even harder than they were before they left. I wanted to know what was going on but no one would tell me. It wasn’t till a few hours later that my parents had told me that my Uncle Carlos, who I had just seen a few days before, had died in a motorcycle accident.

A few years after my uncle had passed away, my grandmother started wearing this necklace. It was two gold rings on a gold chain one just big enough for the smaller one to fit inside the bigger one. It was then that I realized that those rings were my aunt and uncles wedding bands. Those two gold bands that once were on my aunt and uncle’s hands were now on a chain around her neck where they were supposed to stay until the day that she died. I didn’t know it then but those rings were going to be eventually passed down to me.

When I reached the age of fifteen I learned two very important things.  These two things were that when my grandmother passed away I would be given those rings since I was the closest to my Aunt and Uncle. When I heard that I immediately started to cry because at the same time I also learned that my uncle was not who I thought he was. I learned that the happy person that would always bring us toys and would make us laugh was very dark and sad person. The day I found out that I was going to be passed down those two gold rings on the gold chain, I also found out that my uncle was very depressed when my aunt died from breast cancer and to help numb the gut wrenching pain that he felt from her death he decided to turn to drugs, and that when he died he was under the influence of several drugs. It was a mix of drugs, poor decision-making, and mechanical failure with his bike that day that caused him to die.

Ever since the day that I found out that my uncle was a on drugs when he died I swore to myself again that I would never associate myself with it or ever put myself in a situation where I was around it. As of today, I have continued to keep that promise and will continue to keep that promise until the day that I die. As I went through high school I continued to find out more information about what my uncle was really like, by hearing all the stories that my mom would talk about from her childhood up and till before my aunt died.

Although my uncle was not the person he once was when he died I still would have been proud to wear those two gold rings around my neck, because in my eyes he will always be that person that when we were having a bad day would run out to Toys R Us and would bring a toy to our house. He was the person that on Easter Sunday, after dying our eggs he would break one open and would put ketchup on it and while I made faces he would say “Sweet Pea, don’t judge it till you try it”. He was the person that I would always hug first when I went to family events, and even today I am pretty sure I still would.

When my little sister turned 15 my grandmother gave her a little box that contained something very special. It was a rose gold necklace with a rose on the pendant. My uncle gave it to my grandma just two weeks before he died, and she gave it to my little sister on her fifteenth birthday. None of us were expecting it, it was something that when my little sister opened it and my mom saw it and my grandmother, told us what it was that caused everyone in the room to go completely silent and start to tear up a little bit. That same year but just a month later, my older sister graduated from high school, and when she got to the present my grandparents were giving her, my mom told us all to look at my older sister because we would want to see this. We all turned around and stared at my older sister who was quite freaked out at this point and that is when my grandma gripped my grandpa’s hand and waited to see the reaction of my older sister. When she opened the box my older sister started to cry, in the middle of the restaurant, she did not say anything she just got up and hugged my grandparents who were sitting quietly and were tearing up. The reason they were crying is because they had just given my older sister a necklace that was given to my uncle when he graduated from high school.

Then, the unthinkable happened, when I graduated from high school it was a day full of happiness and emotions. I had finally graduated high school and I was feeling on top of this world. Following pictures after the ceremony we drove downtown to the place where we would have a celebratory dinner with my parents, my two sisters, my uncle, and of course my grandparents. After ordering our food, it was time to open my presents. I started with the presents from my parents, then my sisters, then my uncle, and then finally with my grandparents present to me. Nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to see. Once again my mom called everyone’s attention and told them to watch. I slowly opened the box kinda nervous about what I was about to see. Once more my grandmother gripped my grandpa’s hand, and I noticed that my mom was already crying and when I finally got the box open, I looked down and saw something I thought I wouldn’t see for a really long time. In that tiny box were two gold rings on a gold chain that used to hang around my grandmothers neck.

When I was younger, mom read that a child would be more inclined to read and enjoy reading more if they saw a parent reading. My mom whole heartedly believed this, making a point to read her own books while I was nearby. What she read may have been true, considering that from a young age, I always enjoyed reading. I don’t really remember my mother ever reading to me, but when I was in kindergarten or first grade she would read with me every night and really helped me advance in reading. The only books I can remember reading with her were Junie B. Jones books, though I’m sure there were more. I’ve always been interested in fantasy literature. In the third grade I read a series, admittedly too advanced for me at the time, called Dancing With Dragons, as well as the original Grimm Fairytales that my elementary school’s library let me check out. From then on I read mainly fiction and often either fantasy or sci-fi genre books. This preferences was more than likely influenced by the movies I had grown up watching. I loved Disney movies, mainly those dealing with princesses, and musicals. I also fell in love with Shakespeare in high school and began reading those plays for enjoyment. I’m a reader who likes to be far removed from my reality and presented with characters who I can relate to on a level deeper than time, situation, or age. That preference really dictates what I enjoy reading and what I hate reading. I never really like the tween girl series that young girls were supposed to relate to their own lives. I always wanted something more interesting and capturing. It wasn’t until ninth grade that I started reading the Harry Potter series, though I had seen the movies that were out (it’s my unpopular method, ask me about it sometime*).This series really impacted me profoundly and I’ve not really found another series that I’ve wanted to read since. I am 500 pages into the first Game of Thrones novel at the moment, but I’ve found them a bit difficult to blaze through due to length, complexity, and time, though I am caught up on the show (again, my awesome method).

I was a participant in drama club in high school. I was not one made for the spotlight, though. My love was stage management and I was able to stage manage seven shows and work on 13 shows. The show that I am most proud of was our production of The Woman in Black in my junior year of high school. I was the production stage manager, which meant that I organized and managed everyone’s cues. I called every technical movement for the entire show. This was familiar to me, but this play was different, and way more intricate. Not only was I cueing lights, sounds, and spotlights, but I was also cueing chairs to rock and items to be thrown. I had to be completely focused and involved through the entire play. There was one issue though. The week before the show, the most important week, I got sick. I had an 102 degree fever every day and lost my voice. To make matters worse, my school had a policy that if a student was absent from school, they could not participate in extracurricular activities that night. Because it was the most important week of the show and I was the only one who knew when every cue came, I went to school every day that week sick. It was horrible. I think that makes it extra special for me though, because I somehow managed. Now, my favorite show to work on was Midsummer Night’s Dream. I love the play itself and our set was beautiful. Plus it was my final show as a senior. I did end up with a role, regardless of the fact that I was the production stage manager and did not audition, or even want the role. We had many actors drop and the show must go on. I don’t really know where I am going with this paragraph but there it is.

My upbringing was a bit strange to say the least. My mother and biological father were not together by the time I was born and my mother was already dating the man I would call my father. For the first five or six years of my life I was carted off to my father’s house every other weekend, which I hated. For many of those early years I was watched by my various grandmothers, considering I had one mom and two dads, grandmothers were plentiful.

My half-brother, Nick, who is much more my full brother, was born when I was nearly four. I was so excited to be a real big sister. My father had more children younger than me who I rarely saw, but Nick was the real deal. He was my proper baby brother and I was so thrilled. I can never remember any time that I ever wished he wasn’t there.

When I was about six, my father legally gave up his parental rights and my dad was then able to adopt me, and I finally got the last name that I always wanted, Knight, to match my mom, dad, and baby brother. From that point on my childhood was a bit more normal. I was spoiled as the first grandchild and only girl. I had a little brother who did anything I said, and I had two great parents who were very involved in my life.

I do think that the way I started out really impacted who I became. I think it made me a bit more empathetic and accepting overall because I experienced great instability across very different environments. I think it also helped me learn to adapt to change a bit better. All of my families are very different and come from different walks of life, so I’ve been fortunate enough to experience that.

When I was about nine, my mom and dad divorced and my brother and I saw each parent for a week at a time. Both remarried a few years later, so now I can say I am the oldest of ten; three half-brothers, two half-sisters, two step-brothers, and two step-sisters. I am only close to my one brother and two step-sisters now as I grew up mainly with them.

I was a participant in drama club in high school. I was not one made for the spotlight, though. My love was stage management and I was able to stage manage seven shows and work on 13 shows.

As far as reading goes, my mother used to read to me sometimes, but when I got a bit older, she would read with me every night and really helped me advance in reading. I’ve always been interested in fantasy literature. In the third grade I read a series, admittedly too advanced for me at the time, called Dancing With Dragons, as well as the original Grimm Fairytales that my elementary school’s library let me check out. From then on I read mainly fiction and often either fantasy or sci-fi genre books. I also fell in love with Shakespeare in high school and began reading those plays for enjoyment. I’m a reader who likes to be far removed from my reality and presented with characters who I can relate to on a level deeper than time, situation, or age. That preference really dictates what I enjoy reading and what I hate reading. I never really like the tween girl series that young girls were supposed to relate to their own lives. I always wanted something more interesting and capturing. It wasn’t until ninth grade that I started reading the Harry Potter series, though I had seen the movies that were out (it’s my unpopular method, ask me about it sometime).This series really impacted me profoundly and I’ve not really found another series that I’ve wanted to read since. I am 500 pages into the first Game of Thrones novel at the moment, but I’ve found them a bit difficult to blaze through due to length, complexity, and time, though I am caught up on the show (again, my awesome method).

  For many people who enjoy reading as a form of entertainment, reading takes place in a variety of settings. However, I do not enjoy reading for entertainment and find it especially hard to locate moments of my life where my literacy was being developed outside of the classroom setting. I find that my greatest moments in my literacy history took place in school, more specifically, private school.

As a child I was not one of those students that could read in kindergarten. There were kids, who could read those popular picture books about caterpillars turning to butterflies, and things that a brown bear sees, and all the letters of the alphabet falling out of a coconut tree but I just was not one of them. I either memorized the words to these books or completely made up the content to get by. This was discouraging to me. As an irrational five year old I told myself that I would never learn to read on my own. This obviously wasn’t true as reading finally clicked for me only months after the start of my first grade year. By my second grade year, my teacher was reading chapter books to us. This was a huge boost to my confidence because these, Junie B. Jones books, that I thought were an easy read were longer than anything else I had ever attempted to read. I consider this a crucial moment to my literacy history because it is the first series of books that I enjoyed reading. In fourth grade, I was assigned every Friday to a current events report. We were given National Geographic articles to read from their monthly magazine and assigned to summarize the content. This seems to be where I learned the fundamentals of comprehension and note taking skills that I still use today. Fast-forwarding to seventh grade, my English teacher Ms. Miller remains one of my favorite teachers still today. She had this great way of mixing fun and learning that all of us students adored. We could tell that she was doing what she loved; helping to shape our literacy lives with bold methods. We were challenged, yet we didn’t realize at that time how much we gained from her class. I didn’t realize myself, how much Ms. Miller taught us until entering high school, a public high school. The transition from private school to public school came with a lot of pressure. Not just pressure I put on myself to fit into a class size that had multiplied by 15 from my previous year, but pressure from my parents as well. They didn’t want the transition to affect my performance in school. Well, it did affect it, but for the better. I found school easier because of the education that I had received from private school. My freshman English class read To Kill A Mockingbird first semester. A book that Ms. Miller read with us my 7th grade year. But back then, we had no clue we were reading 2 reading levels above what was expected of students our age. This was the case the next semester of my 9th grade English when we studied exact poems that we had previously covered in Ms. Miller’s class, and we even covered the book The Crucible, another one of Ms. Miller’s books.