My Story
My journey of writing professionally started at the age of 10--when I hated having to speak English after moving to the US from Pakistan. I was just a kid. Why was I expected to start over? I had barely started. I was placed in the 5th grade, and in an ESL class--which was kind of useless, because their focus was on reading, writing, grammar, and spelling. You see, in Paki, we learned to read and write English. But we didn't speak much of it--only during the English period. And the most we were encouraged to say was "Can I go to the bathroom?" Oh sorry, "May I go to the bathroom?"
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What I was lacking that even ESL wasn't able to help me with was speaking English fluently. Needless to say, they kicked me out after just one semester, and they were right to do so. I was thrown into the real world (rest of my classes) and forced to speak it. You know how they say the best way to learn a new language is to move to a country that speaks the language? Unfortunately, they are right, and that's exactly what I had to do.
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The fluency was challenging enough, but to make things more interesting, I had to learn the everyday lingo that they spoke in Horn Lake, MS! Let's not forget idioms either. Imagine making a smartass comment, and your classmates say, "Yeah! You can say that again." So you say it again, and they laugh. Too bad the worst part was realizing what "You can say that again" actually meant two years later. Now you see why I hated having to speak English?
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Why would I make a career out of this language then? Well, let's go back to AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) days. Remember Friday and Saturday nights where you fought with your sibling on who would get the computer for the night? I loved AIM and chatting with people behind a screen, because it let me write out my thoughts, read them to myself, edit them, and then hit Enter. I enjoyed being able to articulate my thoughts this way. Unlike in a classroom setting, I didn't need to translate my thoughts from Urdu to English on-the-fly and then work up the courage to say them out loud. On AIM, I could make as many mistakes as it took to carefully communicate my thoughts. And that's when my love for learning English was born.
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The more I chatted on AIM, the better I got at writing. I developed the love for grammar in high school, I majored in English in undergrad, and then went on to getting my Master's in Professional Writing--where I learned the rhetoric of writing, the theory of professional writing, multiple genres of technical and professional writing, editing, managing web content, social media posts, and the list goes on.
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I'm not your average "fell into the writing field" gal. I truly developed a passion and learned the skills from scratch. Not because I had to pick a career, but because I had to learn to start over in a foreign environment. I have so much love for the work I do, and I can't wait to share it with you!