Lasseigne

Haleigh Lasseigne
Jean Coco
English 1101
September 24, 2015
Audience: Students with a fear of giving speeches and talking aloud in class
Preface
I chose to write my paper based on the Personal Literacy Turning Point Narrative.
The focus of my paper is how I overcame and grew from a fear of speaking and
performing in front of a large crowd.
During the peer review activity, my group members helped me notice
improvements that I could make on my paper. These improvements included writing a
stronger conclusion paragraph and elaborating on certain topics. They gave great advice.
For my conclusion paragraph, they suggested adding tips on how to overcome a fear of
giving speeches to make it a stronger conclusion. They also recommended adding detail
to my paper about my counselor, Ms. Natalie, since she played such a large role of
overcoming my fear. The cut- and- tape activity was also very helpful. Before the
activity, paragraph four and five were combined. I noticed that I had too many focuses in
just one paragraph, so I separated them and elaborated on each topic. Both in-class
activities were extremely helpful.
I feel good about all of the revisions that I made after the activities we did in
class. They all improved my paper and made it stronger, therefore, I do no question any
of my revisions.
After getting feedback on the teacher comment draft, I made some changes to
strengthen my paper. My biggest improvement was adding a lot of extra detail. I made a
better transition from my first paragraph to my second. In the third paragraph, I added a
better aspect on the background of my high school writing experience, even though I did
not have much of a background. In the fourth paragraph, I also added more detail. I
described the words of advice that Ms. Natalie had given me that encouraged me to not
give up. I went into depth about the tips I found on writing a good speech in paragraph
five, and in paragraph six I added some insight on how I was feeling the morning of
graduation. In my final paragraph, I added some inserts from my graduation speech. I
removed my conclusion paragraph, as it was not necessary and did not fit in well with my
paper. Instead, I changed my final sentence to give the paper a better closure.
Overcoming Obstacles and Achieving Dreams
Everybody has a fear. For some people, that fear may be heights, spiders, or the
dark. My fear, strangely, is people. Getting soloed out in front of a group of people
intimidates me more than anything in the world. In elementary through high school,

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anytime I was asked to give a presentation or read in front of the class, my face would
turn beet red and I would start giggling uncontrollably. It was the most embarrassing
thing in the world. My teachers would get annoyed with me, but it was something I have
never been able to control, no matter how badly I wanted to.
When I was in the third grade, I joined the basketball team. I ended up being
really good and I absolutely loved it. Fortunately, the only fans that came to support us
were our parents, so I did not mind getting on the court in front of everybody. I played
basketball every year through the eighth grade, continuing to improve my skills. After
middle school, it was time to move up to varsity, where the whole school gathered on
Tuesday and Friday nights to scream and cheer for the team. The high school coach
talked to me and promised me a starting position. I signed up, but when it came time for
tryouts, I could not get the picture of hundreds of parents and students gathered in the
bleachers focused on me out of my head. What if I tripped and fell? What if I missed the
game-winning shot and everybody started booing and blaming our loss on me? Questions
like this ran though my head and are the reason I opted out of high school sports. Social
anxiety got the best of me.
Since I did not have any sports to concentrate on through high school, I really
focused on my schoolwork. I strived to get straight As and made my studies my number
one priority. I studied hard and always tried my best. Classmates often came to me for
help when they were struggling. However, giving speeches and presentations were my
weakness. I was terrible at it. My face would turn red and I would start giggling every
time I walked to the front of the class. My classmates often thought I just was not taking
it seriously and would start laughing with me; but I never did it on purpose. It was

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beyond my control to stop laughing. It was a sort of way to hide my intimidation.

Thankfully, our teachers seldom assigned speeches or presentations, so it never affected
my grade. I maintained a high GPA and came out second in my graduating class. Proud
of my accomplishment, it completely slipped my mind that the salutatorian was to give a
speech at graduation until our school counselor, Ms. Natalie Smith, told me to have a
five-minute speech ready to present on graduation night. I completely freaked out. It is
normal for anybody to get nervous to talk in front of hundreds of people. For me,
however, I felt as though it were the end of the world. That afternoon, I went home and
cried my eyes out. There was no way I would be able to make it through this, I thought.
After spending a lot of time thinking of ways to get out of this situation, I came up with
the idea of giving up my honor of being salutatorian.
The next day at school, I went talk to Ms. Natalie. I told her there was no way I
would be able to give a speech in front of all of those people and I would rather just let
the next person in line take my spot. She immediately refused. She told me that she
would help me get through it and believed I could do it. She told me to type up a speech,
and then she would get my English teacher to review it and help me revise it. Ms. Natalie
told me that it was an honor to be the class salutatorian and she was not going to watch
me give that up just because I was afraid of giving a speech. She gave me lots of words of
encouragement, telling me that I was a bright student and many people have given
speeches in front of large amounts of people and did just fine, so she knew that I could
get through it, too. Ms. Natalie let me know that she would be sitting in the front row, and
if I started struggling to look at her, take a deep breath, and continue talking. She made
me believe that I could do it.

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So for the next week, I spent days trying to come up with the perfect speech. I
researched tips on writing speeches, such as having a light opening to catch and keep
peoples attention, including inside jokes that have been made over the years with my
classmates, and choosing a topic for my speech. I kept the focus of my paper an
appreciative speech, in which I thanked my teachers, parents, and classmates for getting
me through high school and shared some of my favorite moments I had with all of them.
In preparing my speech, I also read previous salutatorians speeches and I stayed up until
two in the morning many days working on it. When I was finally finished, I brought it to
my English teacher, Ms. Sally, to review it. Her face lit up while she was reading it, then
told me she loved it. She did not see any major changes that needed to be done and
assured me that the audience would also love it. Now, I just had to wait until the big day.
The morning of graduation, I woke up with a pit in my stomach. I could not eat all
day. I was constantly contemplating the different ways in which I could mess up and
make a fool of myself. What if I tripped walking to the podium? What if I started
stuttering? What if I started laughing like I do every other time I give a speech? What if
everybody hated my speech? There were multiple times I burst into tears anticipating the
night to come. It took everything in me to put on my cap and gown and drive to school
that evening.
By the time I got there, the gym was already packed. Parents, grandparents, aunts
and uncles all gathered to watch us walk across the stage and receive our diplomas. My
stomach ached and my body shook as we formed the line to walk to our spots. As
salutatorian, I was in charge of the welcoming speech, so I knew I would have to go up
within the first five minutes after the ceremony began.

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The commencement started, and as soon as I heard my name called a million

emotions ran through my head. Just make it to the podium, I had to remind myself. Once
I was facing everybody, I scanned the room, took a deep breath, and began. One of the
first lines of my speech was, Anybody who knows me knows how socially awkward I
am and that I have a problem talking to people one-on-one, much less to a whole group of
people. So if my face turns red and I start giggling, please just bare with me. This served
as an icebreaker to my speech and it made everybody laugh. Once I started, the words
rolled off my tongue with ease. In my speech, I included my senior quote, which was I
always knew looking back on the tears would make me laugh, but I never knew looking
back on the laughs would make me cry. Following that quote, I stated some of the funny
memories that my classmates and I had made through high school. I will always
remember obsessing over the senior boys as freshman with Macenzie and Jaimie. Now,
little girls throw balls at Kyle Blanchard and squeal as they run past him to get the ball,
then freak out even more when he hands it to them. As I included different memories,
the crowd continued to laugh along. Throughout my speech, I spoke at a steady pace and
did not mess up a single time. Once I had finished, the crowd hollered and cheered. I
turned to my counselor in the crowd who had the biggest smile on her face and she
nodded her head at me in pride. This was by far the most overwhelming moment of my
life. I felt extremely proud of myself for getting through the speech, despite my previous
fears of failing.