For the love of language 
Shehi, Monika (2009-03-28)
>>INTERVIEWER: I work so-and-so and I will tell you a story about it. 
>>MONIKA SHEHI: Okay. Can I start?
>>INTERVIEWER: Yes. And you can look us right in the eyes so you don't have to look at yourself. 
>>MONIKA SHEHI: Right. I was so fascinated by that. Okay. So this will be easier to narrate. My name is Monika Shehi. I am an assistant professor of English at Lander University in Greenwood, South Carolina. I was born and raised in Tirana, Albania which at the time was a very isolated country. There were no foreigners, no one could get out of the country, no one could come into the country. Nevertheless, we grew up exposed to linguistic influences to other languages mainly through movies that were not dubbed. 
>>MONIKA SHEHI: Around fourth grade I discovered Dombey and Son, Charles Dickens' book. I read the second volume first and I loved it so much I desperately wanted to read the first volume. A friend of mine had it but she would only lend it to me for three days. So I read it by the fridge light because my mother wouldn't let me stay up past my bedtime so I would sneak into the kitchen and read it by the fridge light. I laughed, I cried, and I begged for more. Something about the world of Dickens really resonated with me and I became an Anglophile on the spot. 
>>MONIKA SHEHI: As luck would have it, when I was in second grade my family moved to a different quarter of the town, a different neighborhood. That is significant because I had to change schools. In my first school where I went to first grade I had to learn Italian. In the school where we moved to I was taught English; I could have been taught either English or Russian but I got into a class where I was taught English, somehow. Because of Charles Dickens I was fascinated with the language; it was very much a case of falling in love with the culture as I perceived it and then transferring the love for the culture to the love for the language. So I studied largely on my own.
>>MONIKA SHEHI: In 1985 the dictator died, Enver Hoxha, and his successor tried to soften up a little bit the kind of communism that had been implemented and open up the country a little bit. One of the things that happened was that the state controlled television station started airing ESL programs, programs made by British TV for learners of English, ESL learners of English. So there was one program with Walter and Connie, who is this yuppie British couple trying to find a job in London. I am sure that is was probably filmed in the fifties or the sixties. This was in the late 1980s that I saw it, right, aired on British TV. But I got so attached to them that when the program was over I cried as if I had lost a friend. When Connie got pregnant they finally ended the program. 
>>MONIKA SHEHI: Then there was Follow Me, yeah, Follow Me with Matthew -- someone; I can't remember. But I remember watching the programs and trying to figure out what a tissue was. Someone had run out of tissues and I scoured every dictionary I could get my hands on to learn what a tissue was. Nothing would explain it. I would read something about cells and biology but nothing to do with nose or anything nose related. Because in Albania we didn't have Kleenexes; we used handkerchiefs. I understood handkerchiefs; I didn't understand tissue. But anyways I studied it diligently and it was a world I could escape into. It was the one class I was very good at. It was the one subject where I was the indisputable best. I had a close friend with whom I competed academically and she beat me in every subject, by this much. She was always a step ahead of me in every subject except English; in English I was the best. I am sure that had something to do with my motivation incentive. 
>>MONIKA SHEHI: But then when I was 18 -- no, what I was 14 -- Communism fell and the country opened up and Casey Kasem started flooding the airwaves, Top 40. I was in the shock of my life because I didn't understand a word I was hearing and I thought I was so good at English. But of course I had learned it through reading and through limited oral exposure. So when I was flooded with English my competence was severely challenged but then I met this couple who was in Albania visiting and I met them so I could practice my English. They invited me to come as an exchange student, which I didn't know what it was, but I understood that it meant coming over to study as an exchange student in high school.
>>MONIKA SHEHI:  I took that opportunity and then I got a scholarship to go to a small college in Northeast Georgia. I remember when I went that I was trying to decide what I was going to major in, very overwhelmed with all the choices, and longed for the dictatorship of Communism. I remember saying that I don't know what I want to major in but I know what I am not going to major in and that is English because I absolutely hate writing papers. Because in Albania we never had to write papers; we had to do everything except write papers. We reproduced, we didn't analyze. I had no idea how to put together a paper until I took a class with Dr. Eidson*, who was a very tough teacher, but I had no choice but to take her class because I had already dropped out of English 101 twice. 
>>MONIKA SHEHI: I was just bemoaning my bad luck; I dragged myself into the class and she basically taught Composition through the modes. The first thing that she asked us to do was she gave us a title called "What a Relief" and asked us to write a story. I wrote a story about the dream that I had as a child when I thought I had fallen off the bridge that led to my grandmother's village. I remembered myself heading towards the water and then waking up right before I hit the water to find myself on the floor. She loved that story, submitted it for a contest and then all of the sudden I thought of myself as a writer. The next assignment was a descriptive essay which I could do. The next one was a compare and analyze essay. Then the research essay sort of incorporated all those different modes and it just made sense to me. She just demystified the process of putting together an argument. 
>>MONIKA SHEHI: Once I was given those rules and those guidelines, I took it from there and ran with it and sort of saw myself as a potential writer and, of course, reader, which I had been all my life. Then I kept taking English classes and when it was time to graduate my major, after the fall break of my senior year, I could not wait any longer, I decided to look at what I had the most electives in and it was English so I just majored in English and just kept going. Now I analyze other people's writing and how they analyze their relationship with writing and their hang-ups about writing and try to understand them and see if I can give them the key that I guess Dr. Eidson* gave me as a freshman. That is the story of my relationship with the English language.   
>>INTERVIEWER: What a totally beautiful story. I am going to save this.