Dear Readers, 

   Growing up I was always insecure when it came to the English language whether it be something large like writing an essay or something as small as participating in a lesson.This insecurity came from a young age because I was never a strong writer, especially when growing up I had to learn the English language by myself because at home I would mostly talk in my mother tongue. I am a Bangladeshi American, in my mother tongue would be Bengali. Balancing both English and Bengali was a struggle for me at first because sometimes I would ‘mess up’ and speak English at home and Bengali in school. This caused a lot of students to call me weird and my parents to yell at me because speaking in English to my parents seemed like I was disrespecting them. They would say things like “Āmi ki tōmāra bandhudēra ēkajana?” or “Āmāra sāthē ēmana kathā balāra tumi kē?” Soon after a while, with practice, I finally got the hang of it and I started receiving awards in classes and even was able to translate for my family if they needed help speaking English. I understood at a young age that my parents struggled a lot coming to an unknown land, not knowing the language, and had to self-teach themselves a lot of things to survive. They always made me remember that we came here for better opportunities and that I should never just give up when an obstacle stands in my way. I can tell this struggle still affects my parents, even now because even though it’s been 20 years and they do know English enough to get around, they still would prefer me to talk and translate for them. Even though I had many good experiences when it came to learning English, I still had my fair share of downs. This one particular time in high school left an impact on me because it made me feel like I wasn’t good enough to be sharing my writing. In my high school, we had a four-year writing program where students in the class would present their work and they would get participation points for it. In this share, the writing would include the intended purpose, audience, and genre, and based on that the feedback would come from the audience to see if it fits the sharer’s criteria. From this feedback, the writer would include it in their writing and then hand it in as a final piece. This wasn’t a problem when I was sharing what writing I wanted to share because it was feedback that I would specifically want to help me strengthen my writing piece. However, the teacher I had at the time went through my portfolio without my permission and she decided to use one of my writing pieces for a lesson that she was planning for her other class to give an example for students who were struggling with ideas on what to write. Usually, I wouldn’t have a problem with this, but it’s the fact that she didn’t inform me about it and the narrative was personal to me. I remember that morning a mutual friend of mine sent me a text saying that they liked my story. I believed that it was the story that I wanted to share, so I said thank you and mentally patted myself on my back. Soon as the conversation continued the more I realized it was a very snarky comment. They didn’t like my writing at all, they were making fun of it. The text was about a personal event in my life where I dealt with racism to the point where I got pushed off a train. The people in the cart thought that I was Muslim and they decided it was a great time to push me off the train when I was nowhere near them and just wanted to go home. As the day went by I started to realize that the piece I wanted to keep private was shared because of my insecurities when writing it and everyone, even my closest friends, was talking about it horrifyingly. I just had to sit and listen to them dissect it sentence by sentence as to why I should be writing better and there was no way this could’ve been true because of how poorly it was written.  Everyone kept having a judgemental face saying ‘Do you write like this.’ In each class I was in I felt eyes and laughter around me saying no way that story was true or how my writing language was much lower than it should be as a high schooler. I believe that my closest friends were trying to joke it off by saying ‘Don’t write like that ever again,’ or ‘Do better bro,’ but those comments didn’t help at all. When I complained to the teacher about it, all she said was that she liked the story and felt that students would learn from it, but I felt that the only thing students learned was how weak I was in writing and how I needed to do better. This was the moment when all of my past achievements in the past when it came to English disappeared. I talked to other teachers about it and although all of them had such nice things to say about it, I just couldn’t take in the compliments at all. My self-confidence shattered and I rarely shared my writing after that. The fact that also bothered me the most was that it was a very personal event that happened to me and no one even cared to ask if I was okay or that I am so sorry that happened to you. Everyone was just so stuck up on how the writing was awful. From then on I tried my hardest to strengthen my writing in every possible way and still am trying to. I never want to feel the feelings I went through during that period and want to show the people that were judging me that I am enough to be able to share my writing. Although I still am a little bit insecure about it because of this event and many others I still try to be as confident as I can be. I try to pick up the shattered pieces and tell myself that I can do better and be better. This will always be one moment I will always remember because I don’t ever want anyone to talk me down like that again about my writing, this was my motivation. 

Best Regards, 

Rishika Datta