Any student enrolled in English 101P, 101, 102, or 112 during Spring 2025 through Spring 2026 may submit an essay of any kind on any topic. There are no length limits for this category. Connor Campbell wrote the 1st place submission in the First-Year Writing category for the 2026 President’s Writing Awards.
About Connor
What’s up! My Name is Connor Campbell. I am a freshman Health Studies (Pre-PA) major here at Boise State. I am absolutely stoked to be able to share the story of my social literacy with all of you! This story is deeply personal to me, so if it impacts you even a sliver of how much it impacted me, my goal has been beyond achieved. Outside of the classroom, I love playing sports, hiking with friends, and growing in my relationship with Jesus Christ!
Winning Manuscript – Social Caterpillar
If we went around the campus here at Boise State and asked students, “What is literacy?” besides the few who would have no idea, most would probably answer “reading” or “writing.” Although that isn’t technically wrong, literacy can be expressed in forms that extend far beyond that narrow-minded and simplistic definition. Some people express literacy through brushstrokes of paint on a canvas, others by protesting injustice throughout the city streets, and some even by shooting a basketball into a hoop. But for me, literacy wasn’t just how my first-grade teacher, Mrs. Hey at Owyhee Elementary, taught and inspired me to read. It wasn’t just how my sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Fleming, grew my love for writing through the therapeutic medium of poetry. Literacy was how that extroverted kid from down the hall pulled me out of my shell (yes, pulled) and helped me cultivate my social skills. That was literacy.
When I was younger, I was a “talkative” kid. Even though other people may have seen me as “talkative,” deep down I struggled with severe social anxiety. I could never say the “right” thing at the “right” time or adapt my language to other social groups besides my close friends. I lacked the ability to have a genuine conversation with anyone outside of my fortress of comfort and security. I never went to a teacher if I needed help on an assignment. I never went to a coach for clarification on a basketball drill. I never even went to my parents if I had something weighing on my mind. This was rooted in my inability to read people or situations and respond to them in an appropriate way. The way you might change your tone, posture, eye contact, gestures, and other nonverbal cues during a conversation with a possible future employer versus your lifelong best friend may seem obvious, but I couldn’t wrap my head around that social “common sense”. I could never mold my communication style to fit certain environments. For
me, social settings were like an impossible game of “hangman”; blindly trying to guess which behavior was right for each space. It would always end the same: game over.
Beyond that, I had no real self-confidence. At the slightest mention of having to do a presentation or speech in class, I would break out in hives and shake uncontrollably. Despite the fact that I was a straight-A student in my reading and writing classes, I had no social literacy. I could read a book, but not a situation. I could write down what I was feeling, but not verbally express those same feelings. I had access to teachers for history, math, English, and science, but no one to teach me how to create a connection with other people, speak up when something was wrong, or break the chains of social anxiety.
During my eighth-grade year at Lone Star Middle School, I met my future best friend, Noah NeVille. Noah was one of those people who could talk to absolutely anyone about absolutely anything. He could meet someone seconds before, and it would seem like they had known each other for a lifetime. Wherever he went, he could spark up a conversation with ease. It didn’t matter if it was another classmate from our history class or the elderly woman browsing the Walmart aisles for groceries; he had an effortless social ability to connect with everyone he met. He was confident, socially aware, charismatic, friendly, and overall a ‘social butterfly’. At the time, for a socially illiterate eighth-grader like me, a person like Noah was almost as intimidating as having to come face-to-face with your mom after doing something that you knew you shouldn’t have. The few conversations that I had with him always made me replay the interaction in my head, analyzing it like I was a football coach reviewing game film for every little mistake my team made. Through the veil of intimidation, I greatly desired to be like him: confident, outgoing, and free from the cage I called ‘comfort’.
Fast forward to the first day of spring football workouts to prepare for our freshman year football season. Sitting in the car as my mom was driving me to the workout, I couldn’t sit still, not because of excitement, but because of pure nervousness. Eventually she dropped me off next to the Nampa High School gym, where I anxiously followed the rest of the athletic-looking crowd into the building. As I was walking to the weight room for my first ever lift, my heart was beating so hard I could feel the blood pulsing through my head. The seniors towering over me looked like Goliaths. I was used to feeling socially small, but this was the first time I felt physically small too.
When I finally got into the weightroom after what felt like an eternity, through the army of Goliaths, I recognized a familiar face. It was Noah. Probably because I was even more scared of everyone else in the weightroom, Noah’s presence felt more welcoming, even comforting. It was a relief to see a familiar face within such an uncertain environment. Since we were both freshmen that played Tight End and Linebacker, we were paired together as lifting partners for the rest of the summer. As I was walking over to squat rack #6, where Noah and I would be lifting that summer, I was hesitant to even talk to him. Despite my fearfulness, he shocked me when he said “What’s up Connor” and dapped me up. He said it with a kind of energy I didn’t expect. It wasn’t indifferent, but lively and genuine. Noah’s surprising initial effort to build our friendship wasn’t just a one-time thing. Every day, he greeted me with kindness and excitement. Over time through his relentless kindness, he finally got me to open up and actually talk to him. I came to not see him as a threat, but as a friend.
For the rest of the summer, Noah became my mentor for social literacy. He didn’t teach me by explaining it, he demonstrated it. I would observe his social interactions with other people and take mental notes about the minor details that would go unnoticed by most, like a pre-med
student shadowing an experienced doctor. Little by little, I started integrating and appropriating the tips I learned from him into my own conversations. I practiced the hand gestures to show interest, the slight nodding paired with the occasional “mhm” to let others know I was listening, and even the “well, I don’t want to take up too much of your time so I’ll let you get out of here” to end a dying conversation gracefully. These subtle actions disobeyed my natural instincts, but with time, they became muscle memory.
Not only was I able to talk more, but I was able to read people better, ask more questions, adapt to people’s tones, actively listen, and build genuine relationships. Conversations weren’t nerve-racking anymore, they were freeing. They didn’t drain my social battery, they supercharged it. By the end of that summer, I realized my literacy wasn’t just reading and writing, but communication. The characteristics I envied in Noah became characteristics I saw in myself. I was confident, socially aware, charismatic, friendly, and overall a ‘social butterfly’. By having a social literacy sponsor like Noah, in just a few months, I transformed from a social outcast to being Nampa High’s freshman class homecoming king, football captain, and a leader in the classroom. Social literacy laid the foundation for who I am today.
As I transition into adulthood, the skills I developed because of Noah shape every part of my life. My voice is just as, if not more, important than the words I read or write on paper.
Deborah Brandt describes the concept of literary appropriation as, “the potential of the sponsored to divert sponsors’ resources toward ulterior projects, often projects of self-interest or self-development” (179). In many ways, that is exactly what I do every day in this journey through college. The social literacy I have carried from Noah over to Boise State, I have adapted to better my personal college experience. It has allowed me to connect better with my peers, professors, my now long-distance family members, and even employers. In middle school, I could easily go
weeks, even months, without growing my social bubble. Now I have a hard time just walking to class without multiple people coming up to talk with me, a “problem” I never thought I would have. What once was my greatest fear is now my greatest confidence. Some people express themselves through sports, art, school, or even a job, but for me…it’s my voice.
Work Cited
Brandt, Deborah. “Sponsors of Literacy.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 49, no. 2, 1998, pp. 165–85. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/358929.