Reading? Gosh! If I ever had started reaping a habit of it when I was young. Reading? Damn! Give me a book and I’ll spend a year time to finish it if it is not importantly urgent. Reading? Lolz! There is something more interestingly entertaining to do. Reading? Yuck! I haven’t listened to Charice’s new album yet. Reading again, huh? I prefer Facebooking. Sorry, reading!
You guess what? I don’t personally like reading that much. Reading is perhaps one of the most challenging tasks ever for students (and teacher also). Am I right, my beliked friends? However, it, I mean reading, bestows us in return lots of, at least some, advantages. And the advantages include……? Grab a book, friend, or browse through some online articles, and you’ll see how magnificently marvelous you are advantaged and benefitted.
Giving a glance to the past, I think I have made some, if not many, self-devastating mistakes, one of which was not to ‘habitise’ (make a habit) reading for myself. Sometimes, I selfishly throw blame on my family and relatives for not having creating desirable atmosphere for me to develop the habit of reading (By this, I am not meaning that complaining is good; I know clearly that the only one thing I can control in the world is the way I react to what happen to me. But it is true, I think, a kid’s habit of doing something depend, at least, upon the environment he/she is living in)
To be more vivid, say, when I was in high school, I was merely a student, and I mean a student(somehow not a real responsible one)—one who only visited the class just to get scores to pass every exam in order to be allowed to next grades, and a student like me, if my brain has not cheated me, was a good trouble for me myself and for most of my high school teachers (if you ever walked my path, you probably grab what I mean here) No books. No reading. No review. No reaching teachers for help. And, rarely, no presence in the class. Not too surprised, I ended up in mediocrity when I graduated from high school. (For Buddha’s sake, I was lucky to enough to get a ‘C’ in my Bac II exam and was even more lucky when…………..lolz, I’m sorry I honestly can’t tell this)
And now—right now I mean—everything is almost the same except for a very slight change. Been an IFL student since 2008, want or not, I have been forced (not by my teachers, anyway) to read, at least those course books. Though I do not read every single page of those course books (sorry, my teachers!), I could now sense how reading, yeah I mean reading, has benefitted me: 1) learn new words, 2) get to know new things, 3) absorb new knowledge, 4) get updated with things happening around the world (I read, sometimes, newspaper and other online news articles) and 5) more.
For the past two years, I have been on and off involved in reading, meaning that I read only when I only had to. Times keep ticking forward and old habit dies hard and new habit comes hard too; I still do not read as a habit. “Reading is challengingly difficult to be acquired as a habit, especially for those who have never been exposed to it, but are now trying to get used to it,” I told myself once. Yet, every very attempt I have been investing into getting reading as one of my habits finally has dimmed out, at least little, light.
Two months ago, I gave myself a new try: extensive reading. It more or less has worked out. I started to read other materials besides course books; I read books about this and that (mostly self-development ones), newspapers, online news on various websites, online short stories, blogged articles (which is both advantageous and of pleasure), Facebook statuses (although some are nonsense), magazine (Khmer ones and there are this-and-that rumors about Cambodian stars—singers, actors, etc) and my previous pieces of writing (and I laughed to myself while reading because of some silly grammatical mistakes) Now, though, nightly, spending at least an hour for reading, I still, either consciously or unconsciously, do not like reading, but I honestly like the fact that I now read.
Yeah! After all, reading is good, and we can be kind to the writers and ourselves by reading.
PS: There are benefits pouring into you when you read. And you are reading this blogged article of mine. Aren’t you? Somehow, I secretly hope you, by any chances, enjoy the writing.
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