I gave my speech in front of my English class yesterday, because Mrs.Dailey is making it worth fifty points. I got an 'A' on it and my class loved it. In Spanish, people heard people talking about it and wanted to hear it. They liked it, too. I'm really hoping that this means that I have a shot at getting one of the three slots. As far as I know, there are eleven or twelve of us trying out. James, my friend who said that commencement speeches were a waste of time and that I had nothing important to say in such a speech, as well as saying that he was taking the high road and not being fake and doing a speech, wrote a speech. A highly controversial speech. As in, we all gasped before laughing hysterically and telling him that there was no way that he would never be picked with that particular part. However funny it was. Another kid's speech was absolutely hilarious. His topic was "Dispelling the Myth That Jocks Have More Fun Than Nerds". I laughed really, really hard. Pretty much because I could relate. All too well, in fact.

My Spanish teacher, ever encouraging (Ha. Right.) criticized all three of these speeches. James, as we pointed out was never going to get picked because of aforementioned controversy (Creationism vs. Evolution. Obviously it's kind of a hot button issue here right now.) . I was either going to be asked to change one phrase in my speech (I make a crack at our football team. And both of their wins. Think Rydell High from Grease) because it may offend people or not picked at all. Even though members of the football team laughed hysterically. But I had already asked Mr.Tuel, a judge for the commencement speech auditions, and he said that I could still be picked, but they could ask me to change my speech. I don't know how I feel about that, but oh well. Ty wouldn't be picked because his speech "pitted the jocks against the nerds" and that might be offensive.

What? It's like the nerds revenge! The jocks have kept us down all through school. It's pay back!

But, offensive. We can't say something about the (crappy) football team because it might upset people. We can't have a speech devoted to nerd-dom because it might be offensive. And get this, our school doesn't even have a valedictorian. We don't announce who the valedictorian is. Guess why?

"We don't want to hurt people's self-esteems."

Yes, please. Let's not reward people for hard work. I don't know who the first in my class is, but I know that the third in the class has a 4.32.  That was as of first semester. She's now an exchange student to an Austrian college. And that's the THIRD in our class. We have a guy who is wait-listed to Harvard and Yale, and his back-up is the University of Chicago (Most people this year are going to either a school in Chicago, Bowling Green, or Kent State).But we can't recognize those people. Nope. Let's coddle the underacheivers (Like yours truly. I'm in the top third of my class and I'm quite okay with that.) and keep the overacheivers down. It's okay.