These Things Happen

Saba Khatchapuridze

    They say home is not where you are but where your heart is and I could not agree less, as a kid I started learning English language just because little me insisted that I wanted to live in the U.S (thanks Hollywood!) and there was nothing that my mom could do to reject my childish decision to fasten on learning English. I was pretty close with languages ever since I was born, my mom speaks multiple languages (Polish, Georgian, Russian) so she decided to teach me all three of them, Georgian because.. well it’s my native language, Russian because It’s very useful in Eastern Europe and Polish because I’m half Polish, but English was nowhere to seen in this list and little me was frustrated, because I had to do it on my own now. Long story short, I was taught to speak 3 languages and then I taught myself to speak English, using movies and cartoons, so technically I never really had academic understanding of English and if you ask me questions concerning grammar, I can answer with the right option but can’t explain what concept is backing up my answer because I simply don’t know. Knowing many languages obviously had effect on my life and I took advantage of it, many times. The most important and specific event that I can think of and recall is the war between Georgia and Russia, which happened in 2008 (I was seven years old), during that time my mom was serving in Iraq and I was in the city where the war was fought with my teenager sister, who did not speak Russian because she decided to learn German, so when the time came and we all had to flee the city, we had to walk around 15 miles to the nearest town, which was capital of Georgia, to do that people had to walk on the highway, since the road was closed and cars couldn’t move,  the problem was that Russian army was already controlling the highway and they set up check-points and to pass them, you were required to answer questions in Russian, so pretty much nobody cared about two kids, which is understandable, it’s in human nature to save yourself and your family first. So as mentioned above, my sister couldn’t speak Russian, so whole burden was on seven year old me to use my mixed accent Russian to convince soldiers to let us pass the checkpoint, fast forward to the moment when we showed up at the checkpoint, soldier standing there was from Moscow, it said on his badge, he treated us like equal adults and asked questions in a firm, polite manner, last question that he asked was where we were going, on which I answered that we were going grocery shopping and would come back (nobody was allowed to leave the town), I don’t think he believed that, furthermore, I am 100 percent sure he realized we were trying to flee, but he still let us go, I am realizing all that right now, but you know… seven year old me got all the credit because I felt like a hero.

    My most memorable experience with English language was in 2015, when I discovered musical track called “Intro” (introduction to the album “These things happen when it’s dark out) by my favorite rapper G-Eazy was based on 1951 English poem “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” written by Welsh author Dylan Thomas. This poem is the first poem I read when I was studying English and I was very, very surprised when I listened to this track, I can’t brag about reading many things  in any of the languages because I am not a big fan of books, but this poem specifically,  attracted me, because it is encouraging and reading and listening to it during the times when I needed the courage the most, especially when I moved to the United States was very helpful, even more, I can say that this poem and musical bit is one of the most crucial and decisive things that helped me move forward, “Do not go gentle into that good night” can be understood in many ways, but most specifically it means not to be afraid of anything, because when time of death comes, we should still fight for our lives and when we look back at the life we lived, we should be convinced that it was worth it and it’s worth fighting for, also as a teenager, I feel inspired by this poem, because it can also be comprehended as an encouragement to rage against the machine, to rage against the system and defeat what’s called quota or in other words common belief.

   Throughout my life, there were many people who affected the way I perceived Language and Literature, starting from my mom ending with my high school guidance counselor in the U.S. Life got tough in the first months of me coming to the United States, as I did not really have any practical experience in speaking English, I was disappointed that I could not experience “American” type of lifestyle fully just because I was not used to speaking English that much, I found it extremely hard to make friends, obviously I met people with whom I shared the language I spoke such as Russians and Georgians but it did not really mean much for me, but thanks to my high school, who put me in regular high school classes instead of ESL I gained practice and experience and now I don’t have any problems with speaking or understanding native speakers, like that if it was not for them, my mom, my school and staff there, I would not speak any other languages, thanks to my mother I have big advantage over other people whenever it comes to applying for jobs or internships, also thanks to my bilingualism I can communicate and interact with many people from different cultures, I can understand about their traditions and things that they value as a group. If It was not for my guidance I would not have applied for college, because I had to take SAT’s 1 month after I arrived in the United States, to sum the story better I have to admit I had no idea what SAT was before I took it in November of 2018 and this all happened because my guidance counselor kept repeating that I could achieve whatever result was my goal and it was worth trying, I was skeptical about it but here I am. I see this journey that I took as a win-win situation, because speaking many different languages looks good on my resume and after all, I did not have to take any language classes in High School which is ironic because I still have to do them anyway in College, but the point is, speaking multiple languages really comes in handy and it’s just a nice feeling to be able to associate with different people and different cultures.

Cover Letter

 First phase of the class was very useful and helpful for me in many ways, starting from recalling the things I learnt in High School and rememorizing them again ending with learning new materials, reading interesting works by authors from different backgrounds and different point of views, the assignments that I finished during this period of time greatly helped me improve my skills of rhetorical reading, I also see an improvement in my note-taking skills and step forward in my abilities to analyze and understand the text, material better. The last assignment that I had to work was the language narrative essay, to finish the essay I had to go through different stuff, first off  – I had to do the first draft, this was little bit confusing for me as I did not really do much of drafting in high school, therefore with some research and with the help of the texts, sample essays and class discussions I was able to draft the essay in three stages, first draft, second draft and the final draft which also was peer reviewed, that was my favorite part of the classwork, because I got lots of useful feedbacks from my classmates and the instructor as well, those feedbacks came really handy in the wrapping up my final version of the essay and planning spoken narrative as well. In conclusion, I think I really improved my skills in “Developing strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing.” and “exploring and analyzing, in writing and reading, a variety of genres and rhetorical situations” (as mentioned on the second page of the syllabus).