I really don't like giving speeches, especially in front of all my friends, but I knew that once I got into the second period advanced English class, I should. I knew what happened after I finished reading it wasn't going to be pretty. I could imagine that what I was about to read would stay with me for the rest of my high school career at Nelsonville-York High School with all my friends teasing me and my teacher, Mrs. Maria, teaching all her students. future freshman lessons on what not to write. As I watched all of this happen, I knew I had to prepare to face the consequences that would come when I was done. Little did I know that this speech would be a huge turning point in my high school career and would influence the way I give speeches and the way I talk to people. It was a Monday morning at Nelsonville-York High School; the weather was beautiful for a September morning. The school year had just started about 3 weeks before the day arrived that I had to submit my paper. I had written about a word that best describes me and a song that best describes that word. Mrs. Maria, our first-year English teacher who loved all her students and helped anyone who needed it, gave us this assignment to help us prepare for the end-of-year test. The purpose of this article was to help us get used to writing articles and understand how we should write them. The word I thought best described me was casual. I chose this word because I can sometimes be casual in front of my friends. I knew I could pick any song that best described that word because most songs are random. The mistake I made was trying to choose a song that only had twelve words in it, and that song was One of These... in the middle of the paper..., but that paper taught me that speeches can be fun, you just have to laugh at the parts that people might find funny even if you think they're embarrassing. Over the next two years at Nelsonville-York, I gave several speeches in front of the class, and after what I experienced with that paper, I liked them all. I also enjoyed reading the monologues out loud to people, especially the funny ones, because I find it fun to read them in front of people now that the paper has really brought out the funny side of me. I usually look at that paper as a dark part of my life, but I also look at it as a part of my life that has really changed how I write my papers, how I talk to people, and how I react to what people say or Do. Thankfully I didn't have to talk about a song again until I hit my junior year of high school, but that's just another story.