Reading is Fun by Lei

Reading is Fun by Lei - November 2016 Scholarship Essay

“Where am I?” I asked myself. As soon as my vision gradually came back, I realized that I was in a shady jungle. Even though I did not know why I was here, I could not resist the urge to keep moving forward, rifle in hand. Suddenly, a Tyrannosaurus jumped out from the bush and dashed furiously to me. I immediately raised my rift and pulled the trigger. The bullets were fired toward the monster’s head but missed the target. I knew I lost the last chance to survive and found out that his fangs had already penetrated into my upper arm. I screamed out loud, and then I woke up. It was another unpleasant dream.
The endless ticking of the clock reminded me it was 3:00 AM. I seemed that I felt asleep on the armchair with headphone covering my ears and joystick still in hand. The gloomy background music of the video game Jurassic Park might be the cause to arouse that nightmare. Before the winter of 2016, this was exactly my life. Comic books, television, and video games dominated all my leisure time after getting off from my work. At that time, I worked full time for one of the biggest luxury brands as a sales associate. It was easy, not physical labor, and I was treated quite well by my store manager because I speak fluent Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese, but it was just the routine practice which killed me. It sometimes even made me not want to walk into the store, and it made me never want to depend on working for a big company. Right after I got pay every month, I spent most of the money on buying video games, comic books, and electronic products. Only when I was submerged by them, I could pull the despair a little bit off me. I even gave in and allowed the addiction affect my health and my life until the most severe typhoon struck and cut off power and communications on the island in November 2015.
Staying along in the darkness, I felt my heart was vacuumed, and the feeling was so miserable that I realized I could no longer be like this for the rest of life. I had to change. That night, I made a decision that I was going to college. When the new semester began in 2016, I was a college student, and my life moved onto a new chapter.
The immediate feeling of college life was that I had to read a lot such as text books, hand-outs, and extra reading materials. To be honest, I had not finished reading a whole book before going to college. It seemed the most tiresome and meaningless activity for me. However, reading was the basic requirement for every course in the college, especially in the English class. Teachers would recommend several related books to us, and we were required to discuss in groups and make comments after reading each of them. At the beginning, I was so reluctant even to open the cover. The horrible feeling overwhelmed me when I was holding a book. My body chemistry would always change as soon as I open the first page. I would be anxious, really anxious. It would take forever to finish the first paragraph. I would spend hours daydreaming because I couldn’t really read the words. I would find myself sitting in one place for an hour and a half accomplishing nothing. I forgot how many times I threw the book away angrily and turned on my PS4 and how many times I forced myself to turn it off and picked the book up again. I knew I was wrestling with the biggest enemy inside me, and I knew that this is the battle I cannot afford to lose.
However, the magic happened after a few weeks. One day, I retrieved an old book on the shelf which I bought from the thrift shop only because of the beautiful cover and started reading it. I unexpectedly found it was so interesting and could not put it down. When I felt my eyes a little sore and put it down, I glimpsed the clock and was shocked to notice that 3 hours had passed. From that day, I changed and started to love reading. Besides the required reading materials from my classes, I asked my teachers to recommend more good books to me. I had read many good books since then such as Sophie’s World, Outliers, and The Power of Habit, etc. Reading not only opened my mind but also improved my reading and writing ability. Now I managed to make more time to read, and I became more confident on my academic because of that.
As being back to the college for almost a year, I am reminded of an old Chinese saying, Shu Zhong Zi You Huang Jin Wu -- literally, there is gold mine in books. I really appreciate that the first year college study helped me discover the charm of reading, and immersing in reading is also the most enjoyable experience I am having every day in my life now. My following plan is to start an online reading club and share my experience with my fellow students. I hope more students in the college can cultivate the hobby of reading.