My name is Aksana and I am very happy to share the story of how Rosetta Stone changed my life.

I was born and grew up on Belarus. We speak Russian there. We study Belarusian and other foreign language as a mandatory curriculum. I started studying English in high school there. To be honest, I was always more into sports than academics. Since I was six years old I started doing gymnastics and it went very well for me. My dream was to become a gymnastics coach. I was planning to go to the university in our city to study for that.

When I was sixteen years old, our family got a chance to move to the United States. Of course as a teenager, I was very excited to visit a different country. My parents were not sure if we would decide to stay here in the States or move back to Belarus. It was not as easy as I thought it was going to be. Two weeks after we came to the US I had to go to school and finish my high school years. The first day in American school was the longest day of my life. I thought that day would never end and that is when I realized that I had made a mistake for not taking English seriously when I was offered it in Belarusian high school. When I came home I cried out to my mom saying that I don’t ever want to go back to school and that I looked silly compared to other classmates for not knowing what they were saying. I don’t even know how to describe the feelings I had for the next couple of weeks, then months.

Being a teenager at high school and not able to communicate with everyone like I used to do in Belarus was very difficult for me. The high school I attended was offering gymnastics practice but I knew I was not able to attend it because of the language barrier. Every day I thought about what I could do to learn English better and faster because sitting in the class every day and then going home and translating everything with a dictionary was not a very interesting activity.

One day when I was about to walk out of my English class my teacher asked if I would like to stay for an extra session to learn English using Rosetta Stone program. Back then I did not know anything about Rosetta Stone, but I stayed that one day to see how it works. After my first day I was amazed how good the program was. I started attending Rosetta Stone learning sessions regularly and after two months I was able to attend gymnastics practice! And more than that, I was getting to know more people in school. I wasn’t feeling awkward any more when someone wanted to ask me something—I could answer! All my teachers noticed that my English skills got better and better with each week. A year later I successfully graduated from high school and enrolled in college.

Now I am working for Rosetta Stone. I am very proud to be on the team of the company that helped me to become the person I am right now. My next goal in life is to become fluent in Spanish.

Aksana is a Customer Care Representative and has worked at Rosetta Stone since 2009.

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