Showing the True Me by Sydney

Showing the True Me by Sydney - December 2013 Scholarship Essay

As a high school student, I have always felt that other students were looking at me and judging everything I did. However, during my first year of high school I found a way to overcome all of this paranoia of what the others thought of me--speech. Extra curricular speech gave me the freedom to be myself and not care what others thought of me.

My first year in speech was scary and I had no idea what to expect. One of my friends joined with me, and we were two out of a total of five people in speech. My speech coach decided that since my friend, Ben, and I were both new to speech we should do something together. So, we decided to try a humorous duo, which is like a small play for two people, at our first speech meet. At the meet I felt so nervous and self-conscious, I was shaking as we stood up in front of a room full of older more experienced speech students. Ben and I gave our speech, and we did horrible. The reason we did so horrible was because we were so afraid of what the others thought of us. We got the lowest scores we could get, and I felt like a fool. My speech coach told us to keep trying, so Ben and I did.

At the last speech meet, Ben and I were feeling depressed and foolish for even being there because our previous meets had gone so bad. We sat by ourselves and practiced, hoping we would not look like fools during our presentation. Then, one of the older speech students sat by us. He listened to us practice for a little, and then he showed us how he would give the speech. He did his part and did not once think about how he might look to others. After he showed us how to speak without worrying about what others thought, Ben and I did what he did. In front of all the experienced speech participants we gave our speech without thinking about what we looked like or what others thought of us. Our score that time was one point away from going to state, but I did not care about the score then.

In speech I learned a valuable lesson from an experienced speaker. I learned to be myself and to not care about what others think of me. I will always remember my trials in speech, and I will always be grateful for the lessons I learned in extra curricular speech.