Similarities Between a King and a Student

"Back to school, back to school, to prove to my Dad I'm not a fool. My lunch packed, my shoes tied tight, I hope I don't get in a fight!" Oh Billy Madison, I'll never forget that little tune.

Anyways, it feels weird to know that I'll be going back to school with the same old routine. It has been great to go about my day without a real plan or schedule set out for me, but I don't think going back to school will be too bad. We've got a week, then finals, and we're done! Obviously we still have to work hard as students to keep our grades up, but we won't have anymore finals. Alright, we'll have AP testing, but that's different. I'm just trying to look at the bright side of things.

An interesting movie I saw the other night is titled "The King's Speech," which is a British historical drama that focuses on the struggles of King George VI as he overcomes his stammering problem. There is much more to the movie that makes it an amazing film. The main subject, his stammering, really hits home with me considering I used to have a stutter myself (stuttering and stammering are essentially the same thing). After taking some speech classes as a young child, my speech impediment disappeared (more or less), although I still wonder how hard life would be if I did have it. I still stutter every now and then when I'm under a great deal of pressure, but I cannot imagine how I would be able to speak publicly if I hadn't been "cured." When I introduced David Sedaris at Playhouse Square, I spoke in front of hundreds, perhaps thousands of people. That would not have been possible if I still had a stutter. Heck, even taking AP English would be impossible, since we speak every single day during class.

I feel as though I was an adequate public speaker before taking AP English, but I now realize that AP English probably helped me become an excellent speaker.