I Was Taught That It Is Best To Be Myself. by Mirell

I Was Taught That It Is Best To Be Myself. by Mirell - July 2016 Scholarship Essay

I Was Taught That It Is Best To Be Myself.

Back in 2011, I was the most shy and silent student from all my college classes. There were several reasons why my behavior was most always shy and silent. First, I was new in the country. My whole family members are United States citizens, but we lived in Mexico most part of our lives, therefore, adapting to a new life style and specially adapting to a new language was a huge struggle. The shyness started when I started feeling “uncomfortable” talking in class. My English skills were enough to understand the language and communicate with professors and classmates, but it was evident that those who listened to me speak struggled to understand my accent. Witnessing their confused facial expressions made me a shy student which preferred to remain silent most of the time.

My lack of self-confidence got worse with one of my English College level classes. My English professor at that time did not explain material in depth and explained everything very quickly, plus, he always finished his lectures with the phrase “but all of you know all this already, right?” then he proceeded a little more or simply finished his lecture. Imagine the huge question mark over my head after every class! Yes, many times I approached my professor with questions but his quick-express explanations were not enough for me, I spoke to classmates and tutors, but every time I turned in an essay I received a low grade with some not very pleasant notes from my professor, telling me that my essays were off line, not organized or did not make sense, etc. At the end, I failed the class, apparently because I never learned how to properly structure an essay. This class literally made me feel “dumb” and less confident about myself.

Not letting this failure define my life, I retook the course on the fall of that same year, but now with a different professor. First day of class came and my fears were suffocating me, my professor was lovely and tried to explain lecture as much as possible, yet, my nerves were eating my brain. At the end of the class I approached my new professor and I told her how I felt and the fact that I might need extra support to pass the class, she simply looked at me and said “oh, don’t you worry, you’ll be fine”. With those words I went home to start on the first essay that would change my student life forever.

While being at home preparing my essay, my previous English class and my failure were always in the back of my head, “structure is everything” that is all I could think of. A week later after turning in our essays, my professor asked me if we could talk at the end of the class, of course, my thoughts were very negative, thinking that my essay was another failure. After class ended, my professor approached me and made the conversation simple and clear, she said “the structure, format and organization of your essay are good, it’s your writing that worries me, looks like you focused so much on a basic structure that you forgot to write fluently”. I perfectly understood what my professor was trying to say, my essay was literally title, main sentence, thesis statement, first paragraph, second paragraph, third paragraph and conclusion, very mechanical and lacking creativity. Then, my professor said the words that forever changed my student life, she said “I don’t want to read your previous professor’s writing, I want to read your writing! I want to get to know who you are as a writer and what is inside your head, not someone else’s head, it is best if you write your own way”. With those words I went back home, and for the first time I felt comfortable writing an essay, because now it was not only writing an essay, it was expressing myself, expressing who I was and how I felt. For the first time I was self-respecting my own thoughts.

From this teacher I learned that in school some are professors and some are teachers. A professor teaches a class, a teacher teaches you how to succeed in class. My teacher made my life in school significantly easier, all this shy-silent student needed was someone to teach her how to do things right.