For much of my life, I learned to measure my worth through certainty. I was taught that the most valuable paths were the ones with clear answers—answers you could calculate, defend, and prove. The way I understood it was that STEM enabled that kind of security: neat solutions, measurable outcomes, that sense of being undeniably “right.” I truly believed that was what success looked like. I was raised to imagine a future that moved in a straight line toward medicine or science, toward answers that left no room for doubt. Stepping away from that path didn’t feel brave; it felt terrifying. Choosing to major in English meant abandoning the structure I had been taught to trust and embracing uncertainty instead. I was afraid of being wrong, of disappointing others, of choosing a life “without guarantees.”
Instead reading taught me, slowly and quietly, that fear is not a sign of failure. For me, it was the price of choosing meaning. To care deeply, to sit with questions instead of rushing toward certainty, as I’ve come to realize is not weakness. It’s a privilege.
STEM trains us to hunt for the answer: the one that closes the problem, resolves the tension, and moves us forward. Literature resists that instinct. It opens questions and leaves them open. Through reading, I learned that most of life does not exist in black ink or white space, but in the blurred, penciled-in margins. Characters contradict themselves. Narrators are unreliable. Endings refuse to satisfy. And yet, in that unresolved mess, something honest and real takes shape.
Books taught me how to live with discomfort, how to hold opposing truths without needing to flatten them into something simpler. Each story stretched my capacity for understanding—of fear, of complexity, of people whose lives look nothing like my own.
This is why the literacy crisis in America is not just an educational failure—it’s a human one.
As fewer children read at grade level and access to books grows increasingly unequal, we are raising a generation conditioned to expect simplicity in a world defined by complexity.
When reading is treated as optional or expendable, young people lose the chance to practice sitting with ambiguity, to build the patience and imagination required to understand difference. Literacy is more than a stepping stone to academic success; it is the foundation of empathy, civic participation, and self-advocacy. Without it, children are not only shut out of opportunity, they are shut out of the very conversations that will shape their futures.
Reading taught me how to live in the gray when I needed it most. In a culture that rewards speed, certainty, and efficiency, literature asks us to slow down, to reflect, and to care. It reminds us that meaning is rarely found at the end of an answer, but in the space between questions. Reading gave me the courage to embrace the beauty of not knowing—to live inside uncertainty while continuing to reach for understanding.