The Art of Being Understood by Noah

The Art of Being Understood by Noah - April 2026 Scholarship Essay

In not just my life, but life as a whole, I believe that wherever you may come from, communication is the most important thing when it comes to presenting yourself. Communication may look and sound different depending on where you are, but what makes every form of communication similar is how someone can understand you. Not all communication is understandable because it may be verbal, written, visual, or a type of body language. However, when it comes down to verbal communication, people may understand someones dialect differently than the person speaking. Sometimes this may cause a language barrier, even in the same language. What plays a huge factor in this barrier is the region in which a person may have grown up. Two people coming from America can both be from the same country, but have different ways of speaking. Factors that can play into this is use of slang, which can be difficult in terms of giving items different names, accents, which may confuse a person on what type of tone they have, and body languages which can give off a different expression.

The skill I hope to master in the next few years is proper communication skills. I want to become a type of person that whoever may speak to me in English can completely understand without any language barriers. I see this as my future goal because of how difficult it can be for me to put my feelings and expressions into words. I am very emotionally intelligent; however, when it comes to reporting what I'm thinking back can cause confusion and frustration. This becomes difficult in many situations, like when I am presenting myself in public, in front of teachers, my community, and adults, due to me trying to show a presentable version of myself.

One reason I feel like I developed the habit of using slang and not properly talking when I grew up around my community during middle school. Unfortunately, during this time period covid-19 first struck the United States, so not only was I in a rough environment with people and friends who all spoke in the same way, but when we were all quarantined for the rest of the year, I did not develop any proper social skills. I feel that this was a major step that I skipped growing up. However, I also believe that something that happened in the past does not always determine how your future will be. Therefore, I started my journey of developing proper communication skills by consistently placing myself in a space where I would talk to many different people with different ways of speaking. My way of doing this was getting a job. Then, in August of 2025, I started my job at FoodLion as a Customer Lead to hopefully improve my communication skills.

So far, to this day, I have learned how to speak so people can understand me, but also allow them to see the real me, not who I want them to see. I am continuing my journey by reading more novels and books to help me learn and comprehend challenging words, which will extend my vocabulary so I don't have to use the same words repeatedly. I hope to learn more and experience more scenarios where I have to use what I’ve learned to achieve my goal.