Literature has been one of the courses or subjects that I took during my Senior High School years. I admit that it used to be one of the subjects that I feared a lot. No, it is not because of the teacher but the subject itself. I was overwhelmed by what people usually say about literature, that it can be "time-consuming", "too difficult to understand", and even "only for intelligent people"! It truly made me scared because I'm really not fond of reading literature works and I don't have a choice but to take the subject during my 12th grade of high school. I enjoy reading but usually just short stories or news articles that I often see yet all my fears slowly faded away the moment our teacher encouraged us to never be afraid of trying things that are foreign to us.
We read different literature works every one or two weeks and did activities that I have learned to love as time passed by. I used to hate group activities, class performances, and oral recitations because it makes me share my thoughts to everyone while all their attention is on me! Those gave me anxiety yet our teacher slowly applied all those activities in every literature work that we read and study in a specific week. I slowly learned to enjoy the art of reading literature. I didn't know that literature can be as exciting and creative like how our teacher showed us. It showed me how excellent and how much heart writers exert on their works especially the Filipino writers. It made me realize that through literature, different topics or issues in a society are tackled. There is something in literature that moved my heart and increased my enjoyment in reading such texts.
It is indeed true that through writing, change is possible. The words, sentences, and paragraphs in a literature work will remain but the heart and mind of the reader have been changed and have learned something that will forever make an impact towards the individual. Enjoying literature wasn't an instant thing for me, I didn't learn to love it in just a second. I gradually learned to appreciate such works and how words of an author can make a change and give hope in our society.
