2022-10-12
I go to a school that is a proper rich kid school. - one of the top 5 schools in Mumbai and it has a library.
I came here, in first grade, not knowing English. I came here naive. I leave being a voracious reader, and a writer, and I “speak English like a foreigner” as my mother puts it. The school planted the seeds of the growth mindset, and all the self-improvement books I’ve read watered that seed.
I am so grateful for that. The fact that I read 40 books a year in my childhood allows for greater information processing capacity now. I can now consume any English content with 100% comprehension.
I don’t watch BS vlogs or entertainment. I watch good quality informative/infotainment stuff. I attribute this to reading and English. My school, essentially.
As I edit this, I also realize that an important part of this was also using the school bus. I was the last one to leave and did not have many friends. If I remember correctly, I was bullied. I read to pass time.
There is a teacher in school who was my physics and chemistry teacher from 5th to 10th grade. He inspired me to ask, and to be curious. My thought process is based on questioning and experimenting to prove myself wrong. So that the ideas I have are resilient. The scientific method essentially. I attribute all this to him.
My school has changed the course of my life for the better, by orders of magnitude. My parents put me in the best school they could. Literally. Not much money is left over for leisure. One of the best decisions my 10th fail and 12th pass parents made. I do not say that lightly.
Something that could compare would be giving me unfettered access to the internet in grade 2. My English was my only bottleneck, along with the processing power of my 2-inch thick laptop. A risky move that paid off. But that is a topic for another post.