“Never start a speech off with a quote. Never say the word quote. It’s quotation. One quotes a quotation. Get that straight. Why aren’t you writing this down?
      “Today, each one of you will learn to face the phobia that seventy four percent of you fear. It is an anxiety that is not going to harm anyone in anyway, so don’t expect to go home with spider bites and bruises from falling off a bridge. No. I am talking about speaking. Public speaking, to be exact.
        “And yes, I know what you are thinking, ‘Oh great, this lady is going to give us a talk on how to speak. Does she think that I want to be here?’. And no, I know you don’t want to be here, but you are. You are here listening to me and I know that or else you would not have processed that sentence.
        “First, though. I feel like I should define what a good public speaker is. What makes a good speaker? Is it someone who inspired you or perhaps it is someone who can make you laugh? Is it someone who can use protracted and posh verses, or one that can talk to you like a real person? False. The lot that was listed above makes a speaker, yes, it shows their persona and their way of persuading you young-minded people, but that is not what makes a good speaker. A good speaker is one that speaks. A good speaker is one who has great confidence in both their selves, their abilities, and their goals, a skill and practice that is not taught or learned or inherited, but rather gained through time.
      “Words on paper will do you no good. You may be a fantastic writer who can pop out an essay within five minutes that is an A plus worthy paper. It may be full of description and personification with metaphors and any other English term that I learned my freshman year of high school that I can’t remember. It may have the whole ball of wax that it needs to be the perfect essay, but what good does it do to have it written on paper? How would that perfect essay come to life if it were only kept to yourself?
      “When I was in seventh grade, my English teacher loved my writing. She kept trying to get me to publish it in literacy magazines and submit it to authors to peer view. I told her no. Even though she stated, ‘Please, please. I will even give you extra credit if you submit it. You don’t even have to do anything else. Just submit it. Just give it to them to read. Deliver it out loud in front of the class, even.’ To all of this, I quickly replied, ‘No.’ Especially to the reciting part. I hated reading out loud in literature class. There was no way that I would orate my own writing out loud. No way.
      ‘No. Mrs. S, I don’t like my writing.’
      ‘Mrs. Shultz, I think that my paper could just use another week, then I’m sure that it will be ready.’
      ‘Oh, don’t worry, I’ll just go last. I don’t want the other students to have to miss their chance of sharing their assignments’
      “And, oh, did I have numerous more excuses that I could pull out of my back pocket. I even took some of our free writing time to scribe down specific reasons as to why I would not speak aloud.
      “One day, we managed to get Author Lady to come to our school. My teacher submitted every work of writing that we had ever done in class. When the author came, she would retell some parts of 8 different essays and ask for the author to come forward. She called on me four times to go up. Every writing assignment that I had ever done, I had to go claim it. I was embarrassed beyond belief. Most people would be proud, but not me. I didn’t want people to see a face to the script for I thought that they may be disappointed. I even remember Author Lady saying in front of the whole grade, ‘I thought you were a boy, by your writing! All of your main characters are men!’ Afterwards, she came up to me and told me, ‘I loved your writings. Keep up the good work.’ That’s when I knew I could write.
      “All I had to do was read it aloud. I needed to get all the emotions that I kept inside of me out. Love, anger, hatred, peacefulness, revulsion; everything that I had felt about every subject matter. I remember standing up in front of the class and my paper falling out of my hands because my palms were so sweaty. I was terrified to read a piece of writing that I wrote.
      “Now, that I look back on it, I recognize that I was senseless, idiotic, and someone who was not afraid whether the paper was good or not, or even if they audience liked it; I was afraid of myself.  I thought that I might end up hating myself. I thought that I might end up as the worse situation possible when it came to my thirteen year old mind; embarrassed. It is okay to be lonely and petrified and tired and insecure and timid and it is okay to be afraid; it’s okay to be human.
      “People are scary. People are mean. And it’s okay to understand that. They are not always going to accept you and love you for who you are. For every belief, there is someone who will disagree. The thing about your ideas are exactly this: people are not always going to approve of them. In fact, society may hate you for them. But you see, that’s okay. It’s okay for people to not like you. That took me a long time to learn. And stating your thoughts and opinions will stir debates, but that’s life. People are going to disagree with you. What’s the point of staying quite?
      “One of my friends from high school, Jia, is terrified of public speaking. So what did she do? She joined the speech team. Honestly, one of the best choices that she could ever have done, was join the team. The speech team competes in regional tournaments that allows us to show off our fabulous-all-girl-team power. When Jia showed up to room C300, we were all surprised.
      “People are not always the most confident in themselves, especially when they are afraid of public speaking. Confidence levels plummet during times in our life, the teenage years being one of the biggest and most predominate times. Jia’s confidence was lower than even the normal emotional and crazy teenage girl’s. I never felt bad for her, though. I was always somewhat envious. I knew that when she found her confidence, she would thrive even more than she already did. I knew that when she realized the potential that we all saw in her, there would be no stopping Jia. I knew that she would be so efficacious in her life. It didn’t take her long to find a sliver of confidence. By her junior year, Jia had started to be successful in speech. She saw a small amount of worth in her that we all saw in her. She saw a small locked door crack open and met light.
      “Confidence is the key to success. It allows us to feel in ourselves what we want to convey to others. We first have to believe in ourselves before anyone else will. Seeing a nervous and shaky girl on stage is going to make her audience feel pity. Even if they listen to her and applaud at the end, those people will never feel what she feels. When I walk up on stage, you knew exactly that what I was going to say mattered, and that you sure as h*ll better listen.
      “Dead Poet’s Society is one of my all-time favorite movies. In a school full of testosterone-y boys, John Keating teaches us that it is okay to be ourselves. It is okay if we are not all that we set out to be. We don’t have to listen to people to figure out who we are, as a writer or a person. He tells us that we have to create our own stories and that our stories are exactly that, our own.
      “One of the boys in the story, Todd Anderson, was terrified to do the same idea that all of us are terrified of; divergence. He had so much to live up to, so much that his parents and friends were counting on him to accomplish in life, but he wanted no part in it. Todd was terrified. He wanted to remain seated and never say a word in class. Mr. Keating tells him that he must give a “barbaric yawp”, since he did not want to deliver one of his poems that he was supposed to write for class. Tentatively, he sounded his yell and it got louder and louder as more pressure was put on him. His last scream was louder than anyone would have ever suspected- he had found his voice.
      “When will you find your barbaric yawp? When will you find your voice? I have always wondered the thoughts of people when I leave a room. After I speak, I just want to know what is running through their minds. I want to know what exactly they thought of me. But, why should that matter? Why should any of you wonder what other people think of you? You are the only one that matters in your opinion. You are the only one who can peer edit your papers truthfully and who can criticize you for the skills that truly matter and who can tell you that ‘I did amazing’. My opinions are the only ones that matter when concerning me; stop being someone else, start telling myself that ‘I make a difference’. Find your voice. Find your confidence. Find yourself. Keep all three. Your voice is your legacy. It calls on you to show yourself for who you truly are. That is the secret to attainment- that is the key to life. It may take years, and you may not even fully realize it in this lifetime, but cherish that moment for when you do, because, like Jia, you are incredible.
      “You will do amazing in your life time, believe me. I may not know your name. And I may not know your story. But I know one fact. You are going to be great. ”