Recount a time when you faced a challenge or set back
Since my childhood days in school, I faced the problem of stammering. I used to be an introvert student from the start of my school days, not that talkative. The main reason behind this was my stammering problem. Slowly, during my primary school days, I felt embarrassed when teachers asked me to read aloud any paragraph from the textbook. With my speech disorder problem, I never wanted to read aloud and stammer in places. Most of the students in my classes were aware of the fact and often laughed at me, except two of my close friends.
As I started to face challenges from a tender age of 4, often, there were days when I refused to go to school. After a day or two, my mother was wise enough to guess the obvious reasons. Even when she asked me, I denied and finally refused to go to school. This made my parents worry, and they decided to meet my class teacher. It was just a few months since we have shifted to the new locality, so I joined the new school.
My parents met with my class teacher, and it showed a ray of hope for me. While I decided to stay back at home, my father’s friend arrived and being aware of my problem, I overheard him saying my father that they should send me to singing classes and help me read books at home. This can help me better deal with my stammering problem. With this in mind, I started to sing slowly and read my textbooks. I always loved spending time with my books with a keen interest in academics from the primary school days. After a few days, I noticed a subtle change in the way in pronounced words.
Keeping this as a secret from my parents, I came to me know that I have to join a speech therapy class that will take place after my school hours. But, as I refused to go to school, my parents requested special permission only to attain the speech therapy session.
It started well with reading and word pronunciation classes. We were a group of few students after a week. We were introduced to theatrical role-play and drama sessions. The instructor of the therapy class helped us with every activity and task we were given. This slowly helped me gain courage and win over my stammering problem. With this, I continued with my singing in my mind and reading books at home. Both these indeed helped me resume my daily classes with friends at the earliest.
Years passed with the therapy class when I slowly started to realize the struggle and challenge students with the stammering problem might be facing at school. This further helped me to participate in different extra-curricular activities in school when my friends did not bully for my stammering.