Undergraduate / "Communications Application" class - time you found something you weren't looking for [4]

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO ESSAY OPTION 4.
While working at the Raytheon Company, Percy Spencer noticed that standing in front of a magnetron (used to generate microwave radio signals) caused a chocolate bar in his pocket to melt. He then placed a bowl of corn in front of the device, and soon it was popping all over the room. A couple of years later, Raytheon was selling the first commercial microwave oven.

Write about a time you found something you weren't looking for.

Tick. Tick. Tick. The interminable metronome of the clock roused me from my half-dazed state. I was in the so-called "Communications Application" summer class, taken to save myself the trouble of a semester of credit. Ms. Johnson, my teacher, walked up to the front and announced that we were going to write a speech and present it the next day.

I was excited. Even before entering high school, I was going to do a grown up thing: Write an honest-to-goodness speech!
As the yellow summer school bus swallowed me whole to take me back home, I daydreamed about the speech I would give tomorrow. Perchance I would be like an Asian, female version of Winston Churchill, rousing the crowd with my quick wit and eloquent rhetoric. Or perhaps, I will emulate the wistful and melancholy speeches Marlon Brando always gives in the movies. Either way, I was stepping into a world of possibilities.

The rest of the night was a blur. I typed like a madwoman, disregarding ill-conceived punctuation and spelling. My creative juices took hold of me, possessing me. I was drunk on power. Writing at warp speed, I imagined this was what a surreal experience felt like. At last, I had written my speech. I went to bed with a light heart and a smile on my lips, imagining the praise I would receive tomorrow.

The next day, when I began my speech, I gave it my all. I used gestures, vocal nuances, and expressions. I probably came off as manic, but I thought I was Clarence Darrow and Plato mixed together. After I sat down, I felt a sense of pride, and yes, even smugness. She was sure to give me extol of the highest honor. Or so I thought.

After class, my teacher asked me to stay behind. And then she announced the fateful verdict that, even to this day, I still remember.
"Stephanie. Your speech was quite... sloppy."
Sloppy. Sloppy. Sloppy. The words reverberated throughout my head. I felt myself deflating. My hubris had goaded me, and punished me for falling to its temptation.

I listened in bewilderment as she commented on my wild gestures, histrionics, and the typos in my draft.
I protested. "MLK and JFK both were really expressive and stuff! You know? I was just trying to be interesting."
"King and Kennedy both knew how to engage their audience, but they also knew how to dial down their emotion, so as to not turn them off with too much exuberance either," she explained gently.

My already burning cheeks felt even more heated. Perhaps I could run away and join a delinquent gang, never to write another speech again. I doubted they would take in thirteen year old girls, but I could give it a shot.

"But!" I immediately perked up at that word.
Ms. Johnson proceeded to soften the initial blows of her criticism. She claimed that although my style was raw, I had potential. She then offered me a position on the Clements Academic Speech Team.

Well. That was certainly unexpected. I came into the classroom today to receive praise, and instead found criticism and an offer to join a speech team. I didn't even know my school had a speech team.

Three years, numerous tournaments, and ten trophies later, I am a more experienced rhetorician with a more, shall we say, humble view on my abilities.

The fateful day I entered the classroom, I wasn't looking for an enriching high school experience, with a team that is my second family, however clichéd that sounds. I was looking for gushing praise about my speech making abilities.

However, I now understand that anything that I believed I deserved praise on deserved tenfold the amount of work and practice put towards it.
Perhaps what I found was not tangible, like, say, a melted chocolate bar or a commercial microwave oven. But what I learned from my serendipity is worth more than a few words of praise for a good speech.

I now thank Mrs. Johnson for criticizing my speech, for without it, I would not have received the fortuitous offer of joining my speech team. I still make a few typos in my debate cases, and yes, I have blundered through an oratory. But I do firmly believe that when I found my speech team, despite it not what I was originally looking for, it was exactly what I needed.