When I was very young, my mother always used to tell me, “You can do anything if you just set your mind to it.” Being very young I really had no idea what that meant until one day my kindergarten teacher told me, “Try your hardest, and everything will work out alright.” I wish that would have been true for me.

Reading and writing have been my worst subjects in school in the past. I have always struggled in these areas and have found it very hard to stay focused for any length of time. I was never interested in what I was reading or writing about. Reading has been my very worst subject, and it has taken a lot of extra work just to be able to keep up in life’s every day challenges. Writing has been a little easier for me because I’ve always found it easy to talk to people and say what I really want to say to bring my point across. I have vivid memories about my reading and writing in the past. They haven’t been very happy ones, and they have caused a lot of grief and pain for me.

My experiences as a reader and a writer started at a very young age. I was about seven years old. I remember in school one day, in second grade, the teacher was reading from a book called Dick and Jane. I remember I liked it because I thought it was funny. The teacher read from this book every day until one day she asked one of the students to read a little. The student began to read, “See Dick run. Run Dick run.” As I listened, I thought to myself, “Wow. This kid is a good reader,” and I thought how much better of a reader they were compared to me. The teacher asked another student to read some, and they were even better than the last kid that read. I thought to myself, “How did these kids get so good at reading?” Finally she called on me, so I started to read. I started off just fine, but as I came across words I didn’t know, I had to stop and try to sound them out. By the time I got started again, I forgot what I was reading about. Then the other students started laughing at me. I was so embarrassed I almost started

crying. I remember the teacher stopped me half way through a sentence, so I wouldn’t embarrass myself any further. That was one of the worst days of my life. So from that day forward I realized I had a reading problem.

During my later years in grade school I went to special reading classes, and my mom had to hire a private tutor that I had to go to every week to help me with my reading. It came to the point were I hated reading and hated school. I started becoming a class clown to try to hide my learning disability. The kids would laugh so I kept doing it, and the teachers hated me for it, and made my school days miserable. It came to the point where they had to send me to a whole new school for kids with learning or discipline problems. It was a small one room class with about eight kids. The teachers there were very disciplinary and didn’t put up with any horse play. This was the beginning of my real learning. The teachers worked one on one with you until you learned whatever it was you were being taught. This was just what I needed, but I was so far behind in my studies I had to stay back two grades just to catch up. I finally started to understand what I was reading and writing. About sixth grade I started back to a normal school where things seemed to get a lot better for me.

My confidence started building once I started junior high school. I could keep up my studies just like all of the other students, and I felt normal for once in my life. I was still slow with my reading, and I still needed special help, but that was okay because I was in a normal atmosphere and starting to enjoy school again. Sports became a big part of my life. I joined the football team, became a really good player, and all the students at school liked me. I started gaining confidence in myself and doing well in school. The teachers really liked me, and for the first time I liked my teachers. But I never really started enjoying reading, so that was my only real struggle in school. I just read what I had to in order to get my school work completed; I really never liked to read much. My writing was okay, but it involved reading so I did as little of it as I could get away with. I did go on to graduate, and I will say school back then was tough. After thirty one years, here I am going back to school. I am really enjoying my writing classes for the first time in my life. One thing about me is that I always have a lot of things to say. So when I write, it comes from the heart. It brings up memories of my life and what I have done to bring myself to this point. I want to do well, and I have done pretty well so far. I love all the people and teachers I have met here at LBCC. I never thought I would ever go to school again, and I really never thought I would like writing. However, it has let me express myself to a point of almost being therapeutic. I don’t consider myself a good writer, but I do enjoy it, and I will keep trying to better myself the best way I know how, with lots of studying and homework. I believe the best things for me to be in my life are being honest and trying to do my best by just being myself. I will always keep reminding myself where I came from, and just how hard it has been just getting to this point in school with my reading and my writing.