Gwynnie+R’s+Final+AmEx+Speech+2017

An America I want to grow old in She’s evil and she’s persistent. She eats at your brain and she tears on your cardiac tissue. She tells you that you are stupid. That you are a waste. That you are just a bundle of cells with no real purpose. When you try to make your bad day, simply a bad day and not a bad week, she is there to make sure you do the opposite. She forces you to settle. To settle for the safest option, for the easiest route. She acts as if she knows best. She reminds you again that you are the gum under the table. She pulls from memories in which you failed and convinces you that you will fail again. Miserably. She is dreadful and she is self doubt. 3.8. The dreaded numbers that have kept me up some nights. The numbers that I had nightmares about. The numbers that I would never stoop to. The numbers that would bring my world crashing down. The numbers that would prove her right. 3.8 The numbers that I let define me. The numbers that go along with the three letters we care about so greatly, G P and A. I came home yesterday with my 3.8 GPA, a lump in my throat, and of course with her. Truthfully, I lost it. I bawled for about an hour. The angry, irrational, scare your neighbors kind of cry. How is this possible? The countless hours of studying, the dozens of tests, the long nights doing homework. And I had nothing to show for. A .3% in physiology and 4% better on my math test, would have proved to myself that I was intelligent. But that was not the case. The almost an A, the almost good enough, the almost smart enough to a teacher, those are what killed me. She had won. She was right. I was useless. I was never gonna be smart enough to get into the universities I once had aspirations to attend. How could this happen? My life is over. My life sucks. However, my responsibilities called and I had to answer. So I pulled myself from the garage chair where I previously had been wallowing in my self pity, and got up. I washed my tear stained cheeks and drove to physical therapy. Physical therapy for my stupid sprained ankle, just another reason my life sucked. But when I was leaving, I got a little dosage of something I desperately needed. Perspective. Her name was bella and she was 3 feet tall. She had the longest eyelashes and the happiest of smiles. But Bella was not like the other little girls. She had a syndrome that affected her facial movements and speech. She had been special needs since birth. I then learned from her mother how difficult it has been trying to get the help she needs and education that suits her ailments. A small child defined from birth by a condition that she had no control of. But that’s the thing. Even at the age of 5, she did not let it define her. She smiled a smile so bright and so pure. She found joy in connecting with random strangers. She was living her life, unconsumed by the difficulties she will have to and has overcome. So if that girl can manage to put a smile on her own face with all the struggles she has been through, then so can I. I was given perspective in the form of a beautiful special needs girl. Because even though I had a horrible day, and a horrible week, I have a great life. I am healthy. I have amazing friends, amazing teachers and amazing parents. I live in a place where the weather is never over 80 degrees. I live by the beach and by the green rolling hills. I have enough money to attend college in the future. I get to shop at Urban Outfitters and eat out on my parents dime. I have the luxury of time, to question things, to talk about politics, to think about the deep topics that are so vital. I have so many great things going on yet I am too easily consumed by the negative. We as a society are too consumed with negativity, so much so, that I felt inclined to write my whole speech about how flawed America truly is. I wanted to write about how much I hate that in the year 2017, people are still discriminated against for the color of their skin, or for their sexual preference, or for their ethnicity and so on. I wanted to talk about how much I hate that our educational system is made for one type of student, when their are so many different types. I wanted to talk about how much I hate that people don’t recognize climate change as the real threat that it is. But then I realized that ranting about all the things I hate doesn’t make the things I hate go away. It is so easy to highlight all the things that are going wrong in our country and our world. But we rarely acknowledge all the good that is happening right now. The America I want to grow old in is an America where people can see how good they have it. An America with perspective. An America where people don’t live as if the next moment or their whole life is guaranteed. An America with students that do not allow a grade to define their intelligence. Now I am not telling you that life is always peachy and happiness is always guaranteed. There will be disappointment, sadness, grief and anger. You will have moments that make you questions yourself; question your worth, intelligence, beauty, wit and so on. There will be days when you cry and cry with no remedy in sight. You will face heartbreak. You will face the true meaning of the good, the bad and the ugly. But if there is anything I know from the 17 years I have lived is that life goes on. For every moment that makes you want to give up, there will be a moment that makes you feel alive. For every heartbreak, their will be person that loves you so much, that pain is a distant memory. For every time Self doubt tells you that you are not smart enough, or not pretty enough, or not good enough, you must find the strength to tell her to kiss your ass. Find a different path to the destination that seemed to only have one paved road leading to it. And accept that you will get to the destination you are supposed to go to, regardless of the journey itself. But in the end it’s up to you. You can choose to let a grade, a struggle, a person, or anything determine who you are and what you will be. Or you can choose to look at the positives in your own life and in the person that you are today.