The most useful thing I have ever learned was to know how to read. I probably started to learn it when I was about four or five years old, but it really changed my world when I read my first book by myself. My father was a special figure in this learning process; he was always encouraging me. He was the one who bought my first set of books, even before I was born, and the one who, most of the time, still keeps buying them.

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Learning how to read opened all kinds of doors for me, and, moreover, it was and it still is a key factor in my continuing pursuit of the person I want to be. It is reading the world around me that I developed my critical sense and could understand how this world runs. It is by reading and formulating questions that I challenged the structures of this very world, a social consciousness which is a big part of me.

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Besides all this, it was only because I know how to read and write in my mother tongue that I could adventure myself in learning English. And to speak English deepened my world view and it gives me access to experiences I never thought I would have. Thus, coming back to books, it is a dream coming true to have more possibilities for them now, and it is only because I am able to read both in English and Portuguese!

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Therefore, to read is the best ability I have ever learned because I would not be who I am today, nor would I be where I am, if it was not for it. And I am really proud of the person I am becoming, glad for the people I met along the way, the places I have visited using my feet or my imagination and the uncountable things I have learned through reading. If I could change something, jokes aside, maybe I would have read more.