Education for me is a scary thought. I never really succeeded in anything and barely passed. The word education is the darkness to the unknown due to the things I was left out on. The education I didn’t receive as an adolescent. That I continue to work on till this day.

 

The most terrifying subject was English. That was the class I never wanted to take. But I never understood why. On paper it’s every easy, you read, and write the things you learned about, but for me it was a class that I felt weird in. It takes me longer to read a page than most people, and when I finish reading, I can’t summarize on what I just read. Until I met the teacher who changed that. Mr. Schisselman was my junior year English teacher. I remember he made me read out loud, but the words of the paper I wasn’t familiar with I was nervous, scared, and horrified that I started to cry. At the end of class, he pulled me to aside and said we will work on it throughout the school year. Little by little I told him the things that happen when I read. And his advice was to read a page and write what you have learned if you can’t reread again. It worked a little bit, but you know as a teen it was hard to put in so much dedication into a class that felt so little compared to the real world at that age.

 

I grew up with bookworms. My mother was a literature major, and my sister was reading the Twilight Series and The Hunger Games at the age of nine. I felt behind, more embarrassed because here I am three years older and can’t read a book without being confused. So instead of pushing myself I just accepted my fate. My parents did force me to read but it never stuck. I was pushing myself once I turned seventeen. I was working at a tax office. I had to read and read and learn how to write a certain way. But the technique that my junior year English teacher taught me, that was on taking notes after reading the page. Which I changed it to taking notes on each paragraph that I read, helped me so much.