Lessons Learned

Posted: August 29, 2024

Photo Credit: Jonathan Fausset

I first moved to Houston Texas in 1990, I was 13 years old. My family had moved into a mostly Hispanic neighborhood that spoke Spanish. So after we had settled in, and I started to make friends in the neighborhood, I began to learn Spanish by default. I didn't have to ask anyone to teach me, and they didn't offer to teach me, I just learned. Someone would talk with their mom or dad and start to fill me in on what was being said. I began to understand after a couple of years and could have a basic conversation in broken Spanish with friends whose parents would answer the phone or the door when I would see if they were home.

My junior year of high school, we moved to Colorado Springs. While I was signing up for classes the counselor saw that I hadn't taken a foreign language yet, so from the languages being offered, I chose Spanish because I thought I could breeze through it and make an A. I needed good grades because I hadn't managed my education very well and didn't have that good of grades by that time.

My Spanish teacher's name was Mr. Sena. He was from Spain and spoke Castilian fluently and from what I remember, he was a pretty good teacher too. The problem was me. I thought I had learned it already and didn't need to pay much attention to the lessons so I would do other homework, read, or write notes in class. The first test taught me how foolish of a mistake that was! I had a conversation with the teacher that everything I had learned was suddenly wrong and he proceeded to tell me about the differences in the dialects, similar to the differences in English from England, the United States, Australia, and other countries that spoke English. If I was to pass his class, I needed to listen to the way he spoke it and how he taught it, and if I chose to speak it differently after his class, that was totally up to me. So, I had to double down on my Spanish and learn everything from the first chapter and the second chapter to pass the next exam, and I did.

Paying attention and being present in the moment is how we live a more rewarding life. What I may have learned in the past could have been wrong, but utilizing the lessons I have learned in the present is how I move forward with true happiness. I may learn something better in the future, but for now but for now I will do the best with what I’ve got!