Mefrom the Autobiography of Malcom X it was because of my letters, which t was writing to people outside jail, thatil happened to stumble upon starting to acquire some kind ora homemade education. became increasingly frustrated at not being able to express what I wanted to convey in letters that I wrote . ... And every book I picked up had few sentences which didn't contain anywhere from one to nearly all the words that might as well have been in chinese. skipped those words, of course, I really ended up with little idea of what the book said . ... saw the best thing i could do was get hold of a dictionary - to study, to learn some words. I requested a dictionary along with some tablets and pencils from the Norfolk Prison Colony school. I spent two days just riffling uncertainly through the dictionary's pages. I'd never realized so many words existed! I didn't know which words I needed to learn. Finally, justte start some kind of action, began copying. In my slow, painstaking, ragged handwriting, I copied into my tablet everything printed on that tirst page, down to the punctuation marks. I believe it took me a day. Then, aloud, to myself, read my own handwriting. woke up the next morning, thinking about those words - immensely proud to realize that not only had I written so much at one time. but I'd written words that I never knew were in the world. Moreover, with a little effort, also could remember what many of these words meant. Treviewed the words whose meanings I didn't remember. Funny thing, from the dictionary's first page right now, that aardvark springs to my mind. The dictionary had a picture of it, a long-tailed, long-eared, burrowing African mammal, which lives off termites caught by sticking out its tongue as an anteater does for ants. I was so fascinated that I went on - I copied the dictionary's next page. And the same experience came when I studied that. With every succeeding page, I also learned of people and places and events from history. Actually, the dictionary is like a miniature encyclopedia. Finally, the dictionary's A section had filled a whole tablet - and I went on to the B's. That was the way I started copying what eventually became the entire dictionary. It went a lot faster after so much practice helped me to pick up handwriting speed. I suppose it was inevitable that as my word-base broadened, I could for the first time pick up a book andread end-now begin to understand what the book was saying. Anyone who has read a great deal can imagine the new world that opened. Let me tell you something: from then until I left the prison, in every free moment I had, if I was not reading in the library, Iwas reading on my bunk. You couldn't have gotten me out of books with a wedge. Months passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned. In fact, up to then, I never had been so truly free in my life but in other words I need
help to come up with a thesis for ambition