Category: Unit 1 (Page 5 of 15)

Unveiling

There is a lot in the world to understand but most importantly yourself. It is hard, especially as a child. Although this may be true, one thing I knew for sure is that I’d deal with anxiety for the rest of my life. Did I know what it was? No. Was there something wrong with me? Perhaps. Did I know how to cope with it? Yes. Writing. 

Despite dealing with this minor issue, my eyes opened when I first began to connect music with writing. My emotions and thoughts confided in my writing alongside the beauty of harmonies and melodies. Little did I know my ability to write the music first started with my education.

It was my first day of kindergarten where I remember waiting out in the yard with my other classmates. All I could feel were my hands shaking and my guts twisting. My thinking process at the time was, “Oh! I am just nervous”, as any kid at the age of 5 would presume. I was oblivious to the idea it would ever impact me yet terrified it’ll happen again. Moving to 4th grade, it was the same issue. I felt the tension in my throat as I gave presentations and saw nothing but eyes as I was the center of attention. I distinctly remember my teacher giving us the assignment to write a fiction story challenging our imagination. I ended up writing a 12-page paper about a British woman named Raquel in the early 1920s. I chose her name representing my aunt and British, showing my obsession with a boyband. Nevertheless, my years in pre-school were miserable and painful. Clueless about what I was feeling and obligated to endure it. The one thing I can take away from it was that 12-page paper that initially started my love for writing. 

  It was in middle school where I effectively learned how to write. It started with the structure of an essay and ended with formulating a thesis statement. My teacher in 8th grade was very harsh and critiqued all things. She made sure we had strong hooks and evidence. She also made sure our analysis was clear yet thoughtful. There was this one time I wrote an argumentative essay for her class and got an 80. I was surprised to see such a low score when I thought it was perfect. I proofread more than three times and didn’t see any other outcome than the one published. I read her feedback and noticed that my explanation wasn’t as direct as I thought it was. She clearly stated my analysis was top-notch but, at times, can be repetitive. At that moment, I acknowledged the flaws in my work.

It was kindergarten where my diagnosis appeared. It was the 4th grade where I recognized my creativity. It was middle school and the 8th grade where I became aware of the weakness in my writing. It was music that allowed me to express myself through poetry. It was my ability to apply my struggle, creativity, perfectionism, and passion to the writer I am today.

side note: I read too much into the final assignment of unit 1 that made me write this draft as if it was the final essay trying to compose the objectives in the writing. If it seems unfinished it’s because it is. I wanted to create an ending to show an understanding of where my writing is approaching rather than another paragraph. As I mentioned, I’m a perfectionist. 

      “After you have read more than ten thousand volumes, you will find it easy to write as if God were there helping you”,this is a very famous sentence that was written by the ancients in China, this means that you must read more to write a good article. We have read a lot since we were born, and we learned a lot from reading. Reading can change a person’s temperament, reading can enrich one’s talk, and enrich one’s thoughts.

      When I was in elementary school, we had to know its pinyin to learn the vocabulary. But I always know the word and its definition  before I learn the pinyin, because the adult has said the word many times in front of me. However pinyin is  still a very important skill to learn everything else. I love to read novels and fairy tales after school. The development of the story inside attracted me deeply, even though there are some words I don’t even know. I will look it up after if I feel that word is a very important connection point that connects two paragraphs together.   

      The first time I met with English was fifth grade, to be honest I don’t like English at all, the way it is spelled and the way it talks. This cause my test grade never went above 60, but I wish I can go back and study it with all my time  now. Skip a few years to the time I was in high school in the US, the first high school I was in,  “Murry Bergtraum high school”. I can barely understand what the teacher said when I sat there. My favorite class are the math and  “ESL”, English as a second language, and I met my first English teacher who is Ms. Tao. She didn’t teach me a lot about reading, but she did teach me how to memorize the vocabulary and the grammar of the sentence. I transferred to “ New York Harbor school” in my second year of the school. This is a very cool school, every student has to take the ferry to the school, and we can see the Hudson river and Statue of liberty, this is also the school I graduated from. And I met my second ESL teacher, Leslie Chow, she helped me a lot, almost everything in school, the most important skill she taught is how to read. First I know that I need to annotate and write down the summary of each paragraph in the margin. Second, copy down the vocabulary that is important or you don’t know, so you can look it up and learn it afterward.  Third, finding the central idea of the article. These are very useful skills I am still using. 

      In conclusion, the advantage of reading is that it improves the quality of life. It fills in the blanks in our lives and prevents us from doing nothing in our great years. From books, we learn to extract useful information and absorb the knowledge needed for growth.  Therefore, we must study seriously and fully realize the importance of reading to improve our lives.