My Eighth Grade Speech

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Kings Court

Compromise; something we have been learning since kindergarten. It’s the middle ground, the in-between. I always thought that compromising was easy. But, that opinion changed when I had to compromise on something that I take a lot of pride in. That something happens to be my writing. And the people I had to compromise and work with, were two of my best friends.

CHANGE SLIDE

It all starts in spectrum way back in November. For a project, my friends and I were assigned to write a play for our class. Us being the writers we are, we decided to write the whole thing out, then script it. In short, we ended up writing a 31 page, 13,500 word, story that took us seven months; in fact we just finished it up a couple weeks ago. However the path to the finish was riddled with trouble, and times that we had to compromise but didn’t know how without hurting one another’s feelings.

CHANGE SLIDE One of the biggest things we had to compromise was our time, and let me tell you that that was very hard for me. I am involved in a travel sport, and for those of you, who are too, you know how time consuming that is, for those of you who don’t just imagine almost every day having practices and playing, it’s a lot, but I wouldn’t give it up for the world. Also, I’m a very social person, and time with my friends is something I enjoy, but when time with my friends means sitting and focusing, it gets complicated. When we did meet up, we were usually at the library. The library, though, has lots of distractions, and my friends would get frustrated with me for not paying attention, or for not listening to them. At one point they even forced me to put noise cancelling headphones on so I wouldn’t be distracted.

CHANGE SLIDE

In addition to time, the plot line and the characters were a huge compromise as well. Remember when I said we were writing the story to turn into a play? Well, before we even started, we had to decide who would play what part. The arguments were crazy, and sometimes didn’t make much sense, but compromises were somehow always reached. The plot line though, wasn’t as easy as the characters. There were arguments that lasted for day, and even now that we are done, there are still some things we haven’t really compromised on. For example, one of the people in the class that we are performing our play in, wanted a Platypus, and the play was in medieval times, where platypi are never really ever mentioned. One of my friends totally bought the idea, while my other friend and I were totally against it. Eventually, we came to an agreement that we would edit it out if we ever actually did something with the story, and we let her write it in. But, we still bother each other about it, even now that we’re done.

CHANGE SLIDE

To wrap up, I would like to thank Meredith, Micaela, and our editor, Anna. Without their help there would be no story, and without a story I wouldn’t have been able to write my speech. They deserve a lot of credit, not only for their writing, but for teaching me that I’m not always right, and that compromising is the best solution to most arguments.

~Mary Mac