Sometimes, we overestimate ourselves when it comes to our ability to read and write, which can end up making us look like fools. However, the lessons you can learn from your experiences can stick with you and help you in ways you never would have expected them to. The best lessons are the ones that teach you to grow through failure. In my case, I was asked to read in front of more than a hundred people, and I consistently made errors throughout the whole reading. Although I viewed it as the most embarrassing moment of my life back then, I look at it now as an experience that I learned from. I am grateful to have had this experience because without it, my perspective on language and literacy wouldn’t have changed the way it did.
When I was in the seventh grade, my classmates and I were forced to enter a competition to see who would get their essay on the Tuskegee Airmen presented to everyone in the school and the Airmen themselves. Prior to this, my class had read a book called The Red Tails: World War II’s Tuskegee Airmen. However, we had no idea that we would have to write about it or present it. Nevertheless, my class took the weekend to write our first essay drafts, and then took the following days to write the complete drafts. Out of roughly thirty-four students, I was the only student who didn’t need to write another draft. Although this was technically good news for me, I wasn’t thrilled when my teacher had announced that I won the contest because it meant that I would have to read it in public. However, my teacher knew that I had a stutter, so she gave me the option to have it read by someone else. I turned down the offer later on because I wanted to prove to myself and to everyone else that the kid with the stutter wasn’t afraid of public speaking.
Little did I know that all the hours I put into rehearsing the speech and researching more information on the Tuskegee Airmen would almost be for nothing. When I got up to the stage and read my essay, I couldn’t believe what was happening. I stuttered, I kept rereading the same lines I just read, I misspelled too many words, and even worse, I happened to get most of my information wrong. I didn’t feel that the book we read had given enough information, so I researched most of my facts online. This didn’t make me look smart, this just proved that my teachers were right to tell us not to use Wikipedia. I was so embarrassed and so ashamed of myself for thinking that my essay was good enough. My heart sank when one of the Airmen went up to the microphone and corrected some of the “facts” I stated. On the drive home I felt a sense of sadness, but eventually it was overpowered by a drive to improve my reading and writing skills. This was when I really learned that failure makes you stronger.
From that point forward, I invested more of my time into my reading and writing. I focused on raising my English grade because I never wanted to have what happened during the speech happen again. My English grades in high school ended up improving because I took the time to practice writing. At this point in my life, I feel that my writing has significantly improved. And although I am still incredibly far from being an expert writer, I always tell myself that I’m at least doing better than I used to. My experience taught me two things. The first thing being that it is important to find the right sources and make sure that what you write is coherent and correct. The second thing being that no matter how confident I am in something, it doesn’t mean that it will guarantee me success. The point is, you’re going to make mistakes when you write, and you aren’t going to notice them at first. You just have to view your “failures” as an opportunity to learn and improve. After all, you can’t learn from your mistakes if you don’t make any.
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