Nicole+M’s+Final+AmEx+Speech+2017

Today I will begin with a story, but before we dive into it you’ll need two pieces of background information. The first thing you’ll need to know is that I’m dyslexic which forces me to confuse letters, numbers and misspell just about every word in the dictionary. The second thing is something most of you know already but just incase someone missed it, it is that I’m looking to play field hockey in college. As part of the recruiting process I’m constantly in contact with numerous coaches all over the country. I have to keep them informed of my grades, how hockey's going, overnights, and an abundance of other information. I make it an effort to try and communicate with these coaches every 2-3 weeks, and this week I’m suppose to talk with my top two colleges. The coaches names are Tina and Wendy, their names aren’t super important now but they will be in a few minutes. So Tina is the head coach at Tufts and Wendy is the head coach at Rochester. Both of them are very similar they look the same act the same, and if I didn't know any better I would of thought they were sisters. So as I said this week I have to send them emails, and I always have to be careful when I do this as my dyslexic brain always misspelled words and confuses the two schools. I drafted an email to Wendy spelled check it various times, had someone else check it and I sent it off. Right after I clicked the send bottom I began to re-read the email, and my blood ran cold right after I read the first line. Which said “Hello Tina”! Oh crap I mean oh crap I can’t believe I just did that. I urgently sent off another email apologizing for my mistake.

While I waited for her response I ran through all of the worst possible scenarios through my head. I convinced myself that I’m an irrelevant, awful, irritating, high schooler who isn’t worth any of her time. Why should she take the time out of her day to talk with someone who couldn’t even bother to get her name correctly. Each one of these schools has hundreds of girls interested in the spot on the team that I have. Each one of them is probably more skill, smart, pleasant, and kind than I will ever be. So why would she hold onto this spot for me, the idiot who can’t get one thing right. I preserved this state of mind until hours later when she finally, email me back, and everything was fine. After the situation had been diffused I thought about what just happened, and I realized that I spent hours convince myself that I was this horrible person because of one incorrect word in an email. It dawned upon me that my life should be like this. My first thoughts should be restrained by the dreadful ideas that live inside my head.

I asked myself, why did I just do that? Why did I spend all this time convincing myself of the worst case scenario? I know a lot of you are probably hearing this and thinking she being way too overdramatic. That is true but this is what it’s like to be me, to live inside my head. If you really think about it this is the same thing everyone does when they're home alone and hear a noise in the kitchen. Generally we assume the worst ad are immediately terrified. According to the article Overcoming Negative Thinking by Nanice Ellis “negative thinking is a survival strategy that causes us to look for what is wrong so that we can protect ourselves”. Which makes since if you hear a strange noise while you home alone you should be scared. But we live in a society where we are raised to be scared of everything. We aren’t taught how to drive with being told we might die or hurt someone else in the process. We can’t learn to swim till we know there's a chance we might drown. We can’t eat food with worrying about choking or wondering what kind of cancer this will give us. All throughout society were taught the negative situations. We’ve been raised to be pessimistic, that should always be scare of the worst possible situation.

 When I grow old I want to live in an American where I’m not traumatizing myself with negative thoughts after everything I do wrong. I want to live in an American where peace, hope and happiness are expressed more often than fear, dismay, and negativity. But most off all I would like to live in an American where I can be home alone, hear a strange noise and not wonder weather I"m about to be robbed or not.