“The Worst Handwriting in the Class”
For most of my school years, I was an average-above-average student.
I was never the top student in my class, but I was never at the bottom either.
Looking back, that seems to describe many areas of my life.
Not exceptional. Not terrible. Just somewhere in the middle.
But one moment in middle school changed the way I think about talent and improvement.
One day in Chinese class, our teacher was handing back homework assignments.
When I walked to the front of the classroom to collect mine, she looked at my handwriting and said:
“Your horizontal lines aren't straight. Your vertical lines aren't straight. You have the worst handwriting in the entire class.”
I still remember that moment vividly.
Not because it was cruel, but because it was the first time I realized how bad my handwriting actually was.
Until then, I had never noticed the gap between myself and everyone else.
That comment hurt.
But it also became a turning point.
From that day on, I decided to improve.
I bought handwriting practice books and spent countless hours copying characters.
On my way to and from school, I would look at signs and advertisements, wondering why some handwriting looked so beautiful and balanced.
A few years later, I met someone who changed everything.
My Desk Mate Li Chunteng
His name was Li Chunteng, my desk mate.
The fact that I still remember his name decades later says a lot about how grateful I am to him.
His handwriting was beautiful.
He often joked that my handwriting looked messy and clumsy.
But I never felt offended.
He was right.
And honestly, he was much better than me—not only in handwriting but also in academics.
Whenever I had the chance, I asked him for advice.
And he patiently taught me.
Not advanced techniques.
Not shortcuts.
Just the basics.
One line at a time.
One character at a time.
Slowly, my handwriting improved.
Then something happened that I never expected.
A Public Compliment in High School
In high school, a Chinese teacher praised my handwriting in front of the entire class.
He said it had style and confidence.
He even asked whether I had received formal calligraphy training.
I told him no.
At the time, I didn't even fully understand what he meant.
But I remember how happy I felt.
For the first time in my life, I had transformed something I was genuinely bad at into something I was good at.
That experience stayed with me.
Even last year, while studying at a Japanese language school in Japan, one of my teachers complimented my handwriting.
And once again, I felt the same quiet satisfaction.
Recently, that memory has made me think about language learning.
I've spent most of my life believing that I'm bad at languages.
I struggled with English throughout school.
My family even bought me an expensive learning device that was popular at the time, hoping it would help.
It didn't make much difference.
Now I'm learning Japanese, and sometimes I catch myself thinking the same thing:
“Maybe I'm just not good at languages.”
But then another question comes to mind.
What if that's not true?
What if I've simply spent years telling myself that story?
What if the biggest obstacle isn't my ability, but my belief about my ability?
Whenever I think about that, I remember my handwriting.
If I had accepted my teacher's criticism and decided that I was simply born with bad handwriting, nothing would have changed.
I would never have improved.
I would never have received those compliments.
And I would never have learned one of the most important lessons of my life.
Many of the limits we face are real.
But many others exist only because we accept them as permanent.
We tell ourselves:
"I'm not talented enough."
"I'm not the type of person who can do that."
"I'm just bad at it."
And once we believe those stories, we stop trying.
Looking back, I don't think handwriting was the most valuable thing I gained from those years of practice.
The real lesson was this:
The Limits We Set for Ourselves
Maybe what limits us has never been our ability.
Maybe it's the boundaries we've drawn around ourselves.