At the time I am writing this, I’ve resented reading for approximately 2,759 days and counting…
On the first day of seventh grade, I walked into my English class fairly confident with my academic abilities. After all, I had just made it into a group of the top 30 students in my grade from the entire school district. I had read the book we were instructed to read over the summer several times cover to cover, and was ecstatic to show off my skills with this exam. The teacher, Mrs. Nsu, struts to the front of the room with her stack of exam packets. She whispers, “take one, pass it down,” under her breath as she passes them out. I eagerly open the cover page to catch a glimpse of the first question, “What color were the curtains in the main character’s living room?”
“THE CURTAINS?” I thought. To be completely honest with you, I probably could not have told you what color the curtains were in my own room, let alone that there were curtains that existed in the realm of this story I had read five times.
The answer was green velvet.
This attempt to culture shock this class of eleven and twelve-year-olds into reading more intently, along with a series of similar questions featured on EVERY exam, manifested itself into years of perfectionism-ridden anxiety and a personal obsessive compulsive disorder diagnosis. With the additional pressure of having every staff member at my school know that I was the granddaughter of the beloved school board president, Barbra Michel, and the daughter of the well-known teacher of the year, Shelley Michel, I was always the center of attention even when I didn’t want to be. I would find myself staring at pages of my assigned readings for hours in hopes I would somehow soak up the random information I would need for my exams through osmosis. I desperately wanted to live up to everyone’s expectations, so much so that reading anything became both physically and emotionally exhausting.
My aunt, on the other hand, loves reading. She purposely does not have any social media, streaming services, or cable television because she would rather read than do anything else. The passion in which she talks about her favorite books is the kind of passion I hope my future spouse talks about me with.
One year she decided to set a goal for herself to read 100 books over the course of a year, making a paper crane to represent each novel and giving them away to the people she cares about. One fateful Tuesday afternoon, I received a text saying she would drop something off at my house. I open the door to find a small paper crane sitting on my doormat. I pick it up to inspect it in more detail to see that the crane is dark green with a fuzzy texture, similar to that of the green curtains I begrudged years before.
Over the quarantine, I decided to give reading a try again.
Training myself out of the academic mindset while reading for fun was difficult, but finding genres I liked along the way helped. I found myself tolerating political and science fiction novels that differentiated from the many Shakespearean and Charles Darwinesc influences I read throughout my time in school. While with my current busy schedule I would much rather participate in a mindless activity in my free time like watching movies on Netflix or scrolling through TikTok, I have finally begun to see the value of reading again… and maybe in another 2,759 days won’t despise reading anymore.
Hozzászólások