We all loved something growing up. Some people were into sports, others dancing, colouring or painting. I was passionate about words. Still am. Something about their musicality, phonology, their prefixes and suffixes, something about how random they sound yet how much meaning each of them carries. I was five years old when I started attending the Swiss School. Suddenly, I realised that what I knew about words was so insignificant compared to the immensity of letter combinations in foreign languages. I learned to read and write in German and Portuguese – I spoke German at school and, when I returned home, I would talk to my mother in Portuguese, since she could not speak any foreign languages herself.
As a lover of the words, the greatest pleasure in experiencing life in a bilingual environment is being able to store all that invaluable knowledge and being able to understand other people without getting lost in translation. We all know that watching subtitled films is not the same as actually understanding what the actors are saying. A lot of the beauty is in their words. The same goes for reading a novel or a poem in its original form. The fact that I was able to partake in the adventurous endeavour of dismissing translations and engaging in the author’s own understanding of words ultimately led me to make writing not only a passion but a career choice.
I am currently in my third year at the New York University (NYU) as a Film Production student with a focus on screenwriting. Nowadays, writing, especially in English (like I am doing right now) seems rather simple, seamless, mundane. A standard screenplay is comprised of around a hundred pages, so imagine how many words that means. However, I was not always that comfortable with writing. There is a difference between being a lover of words and actually writing those words down on a piece of paper, or perhaps, on a keyboard since we are in the 21st century.
I remember vividly my first year as an International Baccalaureate (IB) student. The prospect of writing so many papers in English and German and, ultimately, writing a five-thousand word paper was rather daunting. That feeling of dread was also shared by every single one of my classmates. We honestly didn’t think we could do it. I cannot tell you how many times I panicked in front of my computer screen, thinking I could not type a single word. It takes persistence and, most importantly, support.
The students at ESB Rio de Janeiro are equipped with a team of caring, supportive and motivating teachers who are with them every step of the way. If it wasn’t for the continuous support of my advisor, I probably wouldn’t have finished my Extended Essay. A valuable lesson that I learned from my time there is that it is okay to ask for help. I carried that same principle all the way to NYU and, in my first semester, I sought out the mentorship of my professors and their guidance, so that I could be the best student and soon-to-be professional.
In the end, we all managed to deliver our assignments and the so feared five-thousand word essay. Now, five years later, I just reached the twenty-five-thousand-word count on a book I’m writing. I look back at my sixteen-year-old self terrified of the long journey ahead of her and think how much it prepared me to be the person I am now – a lover of words but, most importantly, a writer.
Juliana Botelho - Ex-aluna ESB Rio de Janeiro
