海角社区

The Journey to Achieve the Best Version of Myself
by Allen Malit

Reading, writing, and speaking came to me naturally since I was young. I always had a good foundation of these three aspects of literacy. Despite this, a major problem that I encountered was overconfidence. I thought I knew everything that I needed to know about writing, but one event in high school changed my whole perspective of writing. Reflecting on how I came to be literate, I was truly fortunate to be able to improve myself and realize not everything would go my way. Furthermore, this was not just a journey on how I improved my reading, writing, and speaking skills, but how I improved spiritually in my relationship with God.

As a young boy, I was constantly stimulated with reading and writing from four major sources: playing video games, watching TV shows, learning through Kumon, and being mentored on writing and speaking skills in high school. While playing video games, I constantly read dialogue, mainly because I played role playing games such as Pok茅mon. Watching TV shows also fed me massive amounts of words that I did not know how to use, which made me curious about what they meant and whether I could incorporate those words into my vocabulary. As for sources that don’t consist of staring at a screen, I was blessed enough to have parents that valued my education. I was put in a Christian private school called Valeo Academy in third grade, where in addition to our core classes, we had theology and spiritual growth classes. In these classes, we would learn about different stories in the Bible, dive into the context of these stories, journal weekly on what God had spoken to us, and give testimonies to our fellow peers. This allowed me to hone my skills in reading, writing, and speaking. In addition to this, I have been doing Shakespeare plays since third grade up until present time, which really honed my language art skills tremendously. Furthermore, my parents put my sister and I in a learning program called Kumon, which helped us advance in our reading, writing, and math skills. I was in the program from first grade until junior year of high school. This program really drilled core concepts of reading and writing into me, which put me further in English classes than my peers. I give massive credit to these four sources that helped me hone my ability to read, write, and speak, as they carried me through my courses from elementary through high school.

Having a good foundation of literacy skills at a young age was great, though it gave rise to some bad habits. Reiterating my problem, I had always been overconfident when it came to writing papers until my sophomore year of high school. On top of this, I did not write my papers just to get a good grade, but rather the best grade in the class. I had this notion that people would recognize me if I was the best. The one event that made me realize my mistakes was when I wrote a research paper on the imports and exports of Thailand. Looking back at it now, it was horribly written and very atrocious to look at. The paper was seven pages long and needed to be structured in a way that my evidence supported my claim. I started off decently, explaining the imports and exports of Thailand along with citing sources, but suddenly, I got into the topic of the food and cuisine of Thailand. The reason behind this is that I ran out of sources for this topic, which led me to talk about Thai cuisine to reach the seven-page requirement. My thought process was, “If I write this coherently, I can get a good grade!” Despite that, the grade I received on this paper was an F, which put me in a state of doubt and confusion. I asked my friends what they got, and they all got high Bs to As. It wasn’t the fact that they got higher grades than I did, but rather at the time, I considered myself a better writer than my peers. I recall running straight to the restroom and crying in the stall. The number of tears that I shed that day was ungodly, but I had to go through that in order to improve myself. After crying oceans in the restroom, I consulted my English teacher after school, who guided me through what I did wrong, and even gave me the opportunity to fully rewrite my paper to get full credit. It took approximately an hour and thirty minutes for my teacher to guide me through my paper. What set me apart from the people who got good grades was that they followed what they needed to write about, while I strayed from what I needed to write about. I relate this situation to Plato’s Allegory by putting myself in the escapee’s shoes, blinded and pained by the sun, which represents my teacher revealing my mistakes. It was painful realizing that my ways of writing still needed improving, but I had to adapt to this truth.

During the two weeks of the rewriting process, I prayed to God that I would get it right this time, in which He answered my prayers and blessed me with spiritual growth. I followed the exact instructions of what the paper needed, along with getting the resources I needed. In the end, I received full credit on the research paper and learned valuable things that served as catalysts for success throughout my remaining years in high school. I learned that everything would not always go my way. There is always room for improvement, and I had not realized that until I had to rewrite that research paper due to my overconfidence in my writing skills. I firmly believe that this is all a part of God’s plan despite the pain I had to go through. Throughout this process of growth, I learned the valuable lesson of not comparing myself to others. Rather than trying to be better than other people, I needed to switch my mindset to being better than myself so that one day I can become the best version of myself. At the time, I took writing for granted; however, it was through writing I was able to spiritually grow and even become valedictorian of Valeo Academy’s class of 2020. I give all the glory to God for using writing to reveal to me how to improve myself, and I hope to improve on my literacy skills in the future to come, such as joining a theater production and attaining a bachelor's of science in biology at 海角社区. Due to COVID-19, I was robbed of my last theater production in high school, so I will make up for that at Lewis. This will be important because my language skills can be honed through theatrics. As for my core education, reading and writing will be beneficial on my journey to attain my bachelor’s of science in biology because I want to pursue dental school, so my vocabulary must improve in order for me to understand advanced real world concepts. My interests in these scientific concepts will tie in perfectly with improving on my literacy, as this will open endless opportunities in the future, such as meeting new people and getting to understand the world through these concepts. I am sure that tying scientific concepts with religious concepts will make me have a deeper understanding of the functions of the world and life. These are just a few examples of how I will improve my literacy in the future, but I am excited to see what God has in store for me.