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Elisabeth Libermann

Professor Novak

English 101-66

16 September 2019

It’s okay

Dear incoming freshman,

As a college freshman barely starting the semester, I remember all the challenges that I

faced in high school and how far I have come since then because of the skills I acquired in order

to make me a better student. I was in the same position you are in now and I understand how

difficult it is to balance schoolwork and trying to figure out how to stay on track when doing

homework. I write this letter hoping to help someone find a new and maybe an easier style of

studying in order to improve their skills in literacy.

Ever since I can remember I have always encountered problems with literacy but mainly it

has to do with assigned material. This ranges from assigned pages from a novel that I had to read

or even textbooks and reading the material then answering questions at the end. To me, these

things were the hardest to do. It's not that I dislike reading, in fact, I have a collection of books at

home all different genres ranging from fantasy to horror and I even have a Library card and go

when I’ve run of books to read, but I couldn’t seem to comprehend any of the material my

teachers would assign to me. In high school, I would spend hours rereading the same pages with

no understanding of what I had just read. As a result, I wouldn’t be able to answer the questions

at the end of the chapters. I noticed that when it comes to lectures and my teacher is speaking

everything clicks in a way that I understand the topic so I found a way to use this technique when
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doing the assigned readings. This problem of not being able to absorb information took me a

while to overcome, it wasn’t until my senior year in high school that I realized this was the only

way to overcome this problem that I had been facing most of my life. I was actually in my AP

Language and Composition class where I had this epiphany as my teacher was speaking with us.

My teacher, Mrs. Petruschin, was straightforward with us and strict and it was the first time

where I was stumped in a subject because she made us delve further than just reading the text

and answering questions but reflecting on what we had read and discussing it with our peers.

How was I going to be able to reflect and discuss the reading when I would spend hours on the

same page and not even understand half of it? When I would go back to class the next day after

being stumped on the readings, Mrs. Petruschin, would read the text aloud like we were

supposed to have the night before and then she broke it down bit by bit, exploring every sentence

further than what was shown on the surface. That's when I had a moment of realization that my

way of just reading the text wasn’t working. That night I went back to the prior night's

homework and reread the whole thing aloud and broke it down and when I got the hang of it, I

went on to the new homework assigned and did the same thing. After this, I started to figure out

different ways that fit for me in order to make sense of literature in general. I know that my study

style may seem quite underwhelming so to say but just this simple change in my studying helped

me improve in my education and now I can solve problems and understand the material that I

wasn’t able to solve back in my freshman year of high school.

After my little “aha” moment in my AP Language and Composition class I began to hone

in my study skills little by little by testing out what worked best for me, if I could read a whole

twenty pages of assigned reading in one sitting or if those twenty pages had to be divided up in
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five. Following this process, I would time how long it took for me to be able to read aloud before

realizing the material I was reading wasn’t being processed. If that was the case, I tried to change

the tone of my voice and stray away from reading aloud in a monotone-bored sound too excited

in order to make myself interested in the topic. This process actually started to work and I began

to feel more intrigued by the topics I would read because I was reading aloud with a voice of

interest instead of seeing it as another task I mandatorily had to accomplish. I understand, as a

fellow student, we can’t force ourselves to be interested in a topic after a rough day of school

because in the end we are teenagers but we still have to find a way to develop our skills in order

to improve our literacy. When things would get too overwhelming for me after school, I took a

different approach and broke everything down.

I first would grab my textbook and a pencil and read the whole thing out loud and

annotate things that seemed related to the topic and if I came across a topic I didn’t understand I

would reread that out loud and break it down until I comprehended it. If I felt overworked, I

would take a step back and try to attain what I had read so far and when I saw that I grasped the

topics I would take a break and then come back and continue on. By doing this, even on the

hardest days, I was able to master various concepts and also strengthen my literacy. I know it

may seem absurd that just reading out loud was able to make a difference but not everybody is

able to comprehend material in the same way, some may need to talk with others and discuss the

topic in order to understand it or even reread it several times.

We are all different and face challenges in our own manner. I hope that my techniques

will be able to help someone even just a bit because I know how difficult and chaotic high school

can get because I was there, struggling to do my assignments, trying to do the nights reading,
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taking pages and pages of notes of things we’ve learned repeatedly over the years but still can't

quite get a hold of. As students we are constantly trying to find ways to improve ourselves and

our literacy but it's okay, its okay if the readings were hard and not easy to learn, it’s okay if your

form of studying isn’t perfect, and it's okay if your skills in literacy is currently lacking because

you won’t be perfect at something on the first try and as time goes on you will develop a way to

improve in your own way, ​and that is okay​.

Best regards,

Elisabeth Libermann