I Didn't Know It Was Mine

The title of my autobiography refers to my mind. I was eighteen years old, starting my first year of college, when I learned how to read. During my first 18 years, I truly thought that I was mentally slow. Because I spoke Finnish at home, in church, and in our neighborhood until I started public schools, I failed to learn how to read English. My second grade teacher said, I have tried my best, but I can t teach you to read, but I am passing you to the next grade because you are well behaved. I spent the next twelve years in public school, well behaved but unable to read. I graduated from high school with a C- average, but was given an all-expense paid basketball scholarship to Mt. Union College. My dormitory roommate was a senior, ministerial student, named Jimmy Sells, who taught me how to read. Now that I learned to read, school was easy because now, I could understand all of the test questions. At the end of the first year, the college awarded me an academic scholarship for being the varsity athlete with the highest grades I had a B+ average. Suddenly, I was born again, but this time I was intelligent, but I didn t know how smart I was. I now discovered I had a wonderful brain, with which I could think and reason how I should behave and act. It was truly a gift from God. No longer did I have to use my brain to follow the instructions of others, who I felt were all smarter than I because they could read. Unintentionally, my second grade teacher taught me that I was stupid, and I had agreed with her for eighteen years. After the first year in college, my whole life has been one challenge after another, trying to measure how high I could climb up the social ladder. It has been gratifying, and I feel the story of my life will give many clues and hints to people who are waiting for someone to give them a break or to think and reason their own exciting future. It is amazing how much that is obvious to adults is not yet discovered by youth. Few students are really encouraged to believe that they have truly capable minds which they can enjoy using constructively, so few ever approach the capacity limits of their minds. If you read Chapters 1 and Chapter 26 first, they provide perspectives frequently ignored in considering the challenge of improving life for our youth.