Isabella+C’s+Final+AmEx+2014+Speech


 * Don't Conform for Society **

Going into this year I was expecting to learn dates and events, because before that’s all that history was to me, a bunch of memorization. So as the year went on I began to realize that history is more than just what you can read in a text book or learn in a lecture. It teaches you about people, the world, culture, and most importantly yourself. The most significant thing i learned about myself this year, is that I really don't know that much about myself. I have a list of goals and hopes, and as I look through them I’m faced with the cold hard realization that this list is a list of other people’s goals and hopes for me. That’s when I realized how much other people have influenced the person that I thought “I wanted” to be.

I never thought twice about what my parents wanted me to do because I thought what they wanted for me was what I wanted for me. Being in a class with such independent minded people has actually made me rethink what I want to do with my life, because they fearlessly stand up for what they believe in despite what other people say or think. They can think for themselves and I admire that.

I want to be able to think for myself, I want to be able to explore the world and the fascinating things out there. I want to try new things even if it ends up hurting me because at least I can say I tried it, I want to be able to love and cry and laugh, and learn about myself in a way that I never have before. As I lay in bed at night unable to fall asleep I know what's keeping me from doing all this is fear.

Fear of being ridiculed for my beliefs, fear of making a mistake that may haunt me for the rest of my life, fear of letting down my parents, the list goes on. But all of these fears reflect the fact that I care far too much about what other people think of me.

I spend my time trying to be good enough, and I've realized nothing I do will ever be “good enough” for me or the people around me who are constantly judging me. Going into high school I told my fire leaders that my goal was to graduate with a 4.0. Now looking at my GPA, that is definitely going to happen, but for some reason I'm not satisfied.

I have this self-destructive desire to be better than everybody else, to have the highest GPA, and to be the best on my sports teams, when in reality it would be a stretch to even say I'm remotely close to either of those things. I set goals for myself yet I can't be happy when I accomplish them because there is someone who did it better. This mentality that I have is keeping me from being confident in myself and who I am.

So I have to ask myself why. Why I am never satisfied? Why do I need people’s approval? Why do I have this incessant need to please people? And I’m faced with the fact that I can't think for myself. I have other people make decisions for me. I let society decide. I let judgmental tool bags tell me who I’m supposed to be.

I don’t want that anymore, I want to be me. I don’t want to be a cliché, or basic. I want bold, and unique and just different in the best way possible.

I realized that maybe I don’t want to go to college straight out of high school. I want to go to Spain, and Italy, and England. I want to travel, experience the world and I want support. I want my family to be supportive of the fact that maybe I don’t want to conform to society's norms.

When I go to any family function all I hear is college. College this, college that. All nine of my mom’s brothers and sisters have graduated from college. My cousin is going to john Hopkins next year and going into pre-med. My other cousin just graduated from Berkeley, and the other from UCLA. College is in my DNA. All my aunts and uncles talk to me about are AP classes, the SAT, and college apps. I am so sick of it. I don’t want to talk about college any more. I don’t want this to be an expectation that I have to live up to. I don’t want people telling me what I'm supposed to do with my life. I want to do me.

I don’t know if many of you know David Birdwell, but he’s a senior this year and I have to say I admire his ability to do what he's passionate about. David is an AP student, an amazing water polo player and not to mention ladies stunningly good looking. Everybody expected him to go to a good D1 university and play water polo, to graduate, go to med school, and become a doctor of some sort. Instead of doing that he said screw it. I don’t want to go to some pretentious university, I want to travel. I want to experience the world for myself, and I am not going to do something just because that’s what society demands.

He shocked me, and at first I thought he was dumb. I thought what was the point? What was the point of going through four years of honors and AP classes, wasting years of training to make a collegiate water polo team and just throwing it away? Then I realized how brilliant it was. He doesn't need people’s approval to be happy. He’s passionate about the world, culture, traveling, that’s what makes him happy and he’s not afraid to pursue it. All this to say I admire his independence. He took a stance, and he was bold. I want to be like that.

In the America I grow old in I want people to be encouraged to follow their own path; not to fit into a narrow standard of what's considered “right”. I want people to pursue their passions despite what anybody else says. I want more independent minded people to stand up for what they believe in, and not cower in the face of adversity. In the America I grow old in I want people to do things for themselves and not for society, because you will never be truly satisfied if you’re trying to please everybody else.

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