How It Happened…
Ashley Reynolds

Consider a terrarium. I have a glass one filled with dirt and moss on my windowsill at home.

At the beginning of my journey through English studies and my teenage years, this is very much

how I saw books. They represented an artificial (and in my mind – perfect) world completely

disconnected from the reality of my life – which to keep it brief, included parents who had a thing

for screaming, cussing, throwing inanimate object, affairs and religious extremism. Oh, and of

course, putting the kids in the middle. But…everything was better when I was reading; even when I

and a reason. And so I read - in every stray moment. It was not so much a dedication to knowledge,

as much as it was an obsession with escapism. I was enclosed in a sweet terrarium, and I never

planned on shattering the glass. Then, it was time for college- intended course of study? Literature.

As Siegel expresses in his article “Unsafe at any Read,” I was on a treacherous road, but

even worse, I had no idea. I thought books were so safe with their singular meaning and positive

messages. Everything changed the day I walked into Literary Theory. I could no longer keep books

separate from reality. I found myself connecting stories to every aspect of society – education,

philosophy, personal experiences, politics, history, gender, human rights, art, music, religion, and it

was just the beginning. These connections permanently entangled me in English studies. Books

were coming to life, and there was no mastering their complexities anymore. It was an intense

destabilization of every truth I thought I knew, similar to Siegel’s reading of Dostoyevksy’s “Notes

from Underground” in the ninth grade. But instead of wallowing in Camus, I realized that I have to

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make my own meaning. The answers aren’t in the books; the questions are in the books. It was time

to stop closing myself in, and start opening myself up.

As Hsu explores in his article, “The Secrets of Storytelling: Why We Love a Good Yarn,”

my social roots were truly digging in now. Books became a psychological need in a completely new

way. I no longer relied as them as an escape, but as a gateway to understanding new ideas,

perspectives and cultures outside of myself. Hsu ends his piece by asserting “stories can enhance

social skills by acting as simulators for the brain, which may turn the idea of the socially crippled

bookworm on is head.” This is absolutely true in my own life, and I have felt in the past three years.

Books have made me more courageous, inquisitive, excited, empathetic and open-minded, but I also

know books can make one vulnerable, isolated, naïve and shut-off, as I once was. As usual, it is all

in the interpretation.

I became an English major for all the wrong reasons, but I could not be happier that I did. I

fell in love with literature in a whole new way once arriving at the University of Idaho, and it truly

changed me for the better. In Walden, Henry David Thoreau wrote, “We need the tonic of

wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all

things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and

unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature." Literature has gone

from my terrarium to my wilderness, and I can never get enough of it.