Bad Habits
When I was a little boy I hated reading, I still do. Reading was and still is my worst enemy… even more than math. But for those book-lovers out there who are thinking how it’s even possible for someone to say such a thing, I want you to know that I didn’t ask for this; it goes back to when I was in elementary, not in FDR, but in Cambridge.
In English class, I would be given very short books; each with about three sentences in each page, 15 pages, twice a week. Even though the amount was minimum, I probably read 20 or so in six years; not a lot, huh? Spanish was no better; we needed to read an actual “long” book every week, about 100 pages depending on the grade we were in, yet I never actually read one. I would check out this one book with 12 stories in it, all Danish fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen. For over six years I wrote about the same stories: The Emperor’s New Suit, The Steadfast Tin Soldier, The Ugly Duckling, The Little Match-Seller, etc. In my life, I’ve probably read no more than 30 books, all school-forced.
Today, when we were reading the blog post by the current Juniors, Mr. Bonnici announced, “You should be switching to the second blogpost now.” and for the first time in my 16 years of existence, I wasn’t behind. It had been a long time since I felt such a high level of accomplishment. I know, I know, to some it must be extremely insignificant, even degrading, but I had never felt smart when reading. This went to such an extreme, that a couple of months ago, I decided that I needed to be tested to see if I had some sort of learning disorder. After four weeks of testing, I was diagnosed with nothing but the reading ability of a 5th grader, being in 9th grade. This made me realize that I should go to the psychologist, where I would get help to enhance and bring out my full reading potential.
At these sessions, where we would read and only read, I would get tired after 10 minutes or less because I had this horrible habit of not reading since a young age. Now that I’ve grown, I’ve found it to be an extreme disadvantage. My entire life I’ve been told that I need to read because it’s crucial to life, but I would ignore these people. I now know that if I don’t fix it soon, there will be harsh consequences in the future. But that is the good thing about bad habits… they’re not permanent.
No matter what your bad habit is, no matter how big or small it is, it should be solved because it’s bad. I can assure you that there is no habit strong enough to stop you from overcoming it. It’s all up to you, whether you are strong enough, if you are willing to put in the effort to overcome it.