“English not only helps us understand the world, but ourselves.”

by Fidan Malikova

As a 15 year-old freshmen in high school, I have had quite an experience with writing. I write for the newspapers at my school,which is called Cutlass. It is an amazing experience in which I get to work with such wonderful people, and meet all kinds of different people during interviews for some of my articles I’ve done. The Monday back from winter break, I was asked to be an editor for the Arts and Entertainment section of Cutlass.

I couldn’t believe it, I was incredibly shocked, but it was the highlight of the beginning of my 2016. I have written a few articles for Cutlass, but being an editor, I have dreamt and thought about, but never expected it to be a reality. I have learned that with enough dedication and passion; anything is possible, even the so-called “impossible.”

As a writer, I love taking every opportunity I’m given, and looking at the world in a whole other perspective, and I love showing people the world in my eyes as well. English class however, even as a freshmen has made me realize that I’m not the only one like this. My teacher likes us digging deeper, finding out the meaning of things and understanding the concept of “why.”

We read a book this year, Fahrenheit 451, about a society that bans books and knowledge. But a hero, steps in and is the first to take a stand, after realizing how horrible the society is. As we read this book, our teacher kept wanting us to ask ourselves, “why.” Why does he do this? Why does this make his society better? Why does this specifically make him a hero? We emphasized until there was nothing left to emphasize.

Embed from Getty Images

We even wrote an essay about the book, about why he was a hero. As we wrote, our teacher told us to think about their society versus ours, compare it, and think about how the main character was a hero because of the risks he took. We dug in as deeply as we possibly could. But the most important thing we got out of this was the lesson learned. That we all need to make our mark on the world somehow, no matter what way we decide to do so.

English class this year has continued to teach me and other students that reading and writing is not just a skill, but something used to comprehend everything going on in the world. It’s a way to understand the world and learn lessons from mistakes we’ve made in the past, or even stop us from making mistakes in the future. It’s a beautiful way of expressing our thoughts and feelings, and capturing humanity.

We all write and read about mistakes, memories, the past, and perhaps sometimes even the future but what we sometimes don’t understand is that it’s not about what we read, but what we learn from it, and what we do from the knowledge we’ve gained. English not only helps us understand the world, but ourselves. We can learn a lot about ourselves and who we are with just the thought of knowing what we want to read or write about.

Some of us think that we want to read or write about a specific topic because we crave the thought of information and/or creation; but in reality it’s what we’re feeling. It’s what we’re wanting to either happen to us, or to never happen to us. Some of us like action, wanting to take risks and to become a hero in some sort of way. But on the other hand, some of us read sad romances, not wanting to end up heartbroken. That is just my opinion, but I truly believe in it. We either desperately want it to happen to us or want to stay away from what we read and write about. Sometimes we just write about fantasies, imagining what it would be like to be a character in the book; in that case, it would be a need of wanting it to happen to us. And this is the part that makes the world a better place. We read about someone being a hero and think about how we want to do something that would incredibly impact the world; it sets an example for us and pushes us to do the right thing. It gives us something to believe in while chasing after the right motivation.

Or we don’t. We don’t do anything with the information we’ve read  about, which is also perfectly fine. If we read about something negative or depressing, we decide we don’t want to go that path so we try to not make the same mistakes. Even if we do, we know how to fix them.

We as human beings, are teaching one another how to fix each other’s mistakes with the power of knowledge within reading and writing. We as humans, are impacting one another, which leads to us impacting the world. We not only understand ourselves a bit better, but we understand one another. Which is incredible. But what’s more incredible is how reading and writing can lead us to making the world a better place– with the power of reading and writing given to us, we are motivated to change the world, one step at a time.