I wrote up this essay but I'm already over 500 words and I can't think of a way to conclude it. Help?
PROMPT: "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new." - A. Einstein. Describe your most interesting mistake.
I learned the wrong language. This is the simplest way I can describe my most interesting mistake. However, I am well aware that this answer makes minimal sense without a background. Every reaction I've had to this statement have been the same: sheer confusion. The few people I've shared this story with found it difficult to comprehend exactly how a person could "mistakenly" learn a language. Clearly, it is not the most common situation in the world, but I am living breathing proof that it can happen.
As an Indian child in America, I grew up knowing only how to speak Punjabi. This quality quickly transformed into a crisis upon starting grade school because I didn't know enough English to communicate with my classmates. My sister Kamal, who is three years my elder, faced the same dilemma and ended up with a six year sentence in English as a Second Language (ESL) classes. In an attempt to avoid the same fate, my parents made the decision to stop speaking Punjabi altogether. This created an unforgettably awkward situation. Since my parents were not fluent in the English language, communicating with them became a strange expression of mixed English and Punjabi tongues. In retrospect, this was probably not the most efficient method to learn a new language, but in the end it worked; maybe even too successfully. In my struggled attempt to learn English, all memory of my native language began to fade. By middle school I had completely forgotten how to speak Punjabi at all. Though the mistake of allowing my first language to escape me was great, it was still not as disastrous as the mistake that was to come.
In my late middle school years I began addictively watching a series of melodramatic Indian serials. Understanding took some effort at first because the shows only aired in Hindi. This language, though vaguely similar to Punjabi, was completely new to me. With the crutch of subtitles, I followed along for about a year until I realized that I didn't need them anymore. By some miracle of my questionably complex mind, I was able to not only understand Hindi within a year, but to fluently converse in it as well. Instead of proving to be an asset however, my ability to speak Hindi completely threw off my Punjabi. When my granddad recently moved in with my family, I had to learn to speak Punjabi all over again. Initially, I thought re-learning it would actually be easier because Hindi was so similar. Unfortunately, that was not the case. When I tried to speak to my granddad, what came out was nothing more than an awkward combination of the two languages squished together. It was like a train collision in my mind that I found impossible to differentiate. Here I was on my tiny pedestal reminiscing in my newly discovered talent when a slap of reality pushed me into a pit of utter confusion. My family laughed for weeks as I attempted to communicate without mixing up languages. At the time, accidently learning Hindi felt like worst mistake I had ever made. It set me up for disaster in terms of speaking with my relatives.
PROMPT: "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new." - A. Einstein. Describe your most interesting mistake.
I learned the wrong language. This is the simplest way I can describe my most interesting mistake. However, I am well aware that this answer makes minimal sense without a background. Every reaction I've had to this statement have been the same: sheer confusion. The few people I've shared this story with found it difficult to comprehend exactly how a person could "mistakenly" learn a language. Clearly, it is not the most common situation in the world, but I am living breathing proof that it can happen.
As an Indian child in America, I grew up knowing only how to speak Punjabi. This quality quickly transformed into a crisis upon starting grade school because I didn't know enough English to communicate with my classmates. My sister Kamal, who is three years my elder, faced the same dilemma and ended up with a six year sentence in English as a Second Language (ESL) classes. In an attempt to avoid the same fate, my parents made the decision to stop speaking Punjabi altogether. This created an unforgettably awkward situation. Since my parents were not fluent in the English language, communicating with them became a strange expression of mixed English and Punjabi tongues. In retrospect, this was probably not the most efficient method to learn a new language, but in the end it worked; maybe even too successfully. In my struggled attempt to learn English, all memory of my native language began to fade. By middle school I had completely forgotten how to speak Punjabi at all. Though the mistake of allowing my first language to escape me was great, it was still not as disastrous as the mistake that was to come.
In my late middle school years I began addictively watching a series of melodramatic Indian serials. Understanding took some effort at first because the shows only aired in Hindi. This language, though vaguely similar to Punjabi, was completely new to me. With the crutch of subtitles, I followed along for about a year until I realized that I didn't need them anymore. By some miracle of my questionably complex mind, I was able to not only understand Hindi within a year, but to fluently converse in it as well. Instead of proving to be an asset however, my ability to speak Hindi completely threw off my Punjabi. When my granddad recently moved in with my family, I had to learn to speak Punjabi all over again. Initially, I thought re-learning it would actually be easier because Hindi was so similar. Unfortunately, that was not the case. When I tried to speak to my granddad, what came out was nothing more than an awkward combination of the two languages squished together. It was like a train collision in my mind that I found impossible to differentiate. Here I was on my tiny pedestal reminiscing in my newly discovered talent when a slap of reality pushed me into a pit of utter confusion. My family laughed for weeks as I attempted to communicate without mixing up languages. At the time, accidently learning Hindi felt like worst mistake I had ever made. It set me up for disaster in terms of speaking with my relatives.
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