This speech is written by one of my grade 11 students. He has started his speech with an interesting analogy, which not only attracts the attention of the audience but also helps convey the message. He has also included a number of anecdotes to appeal to the listeners’ emotions. He has also applied some examples and facts, strengthening his stance on the issue. Please note that the script is only half of the task; the other half is how the speech is presented.
Open Minded Selection
Open-minded students share certain traits with eagles that fly high in the sky, exploring trees, mountains, rivers, and everything else on the surface of the land. Gliding up in the sky, the eagle could easily spot and target not only a prey but also the best prey. Single-minded students, on the other hand, more or less resemble koala bears. By unconditionally clinging to trees, they deprive themselves of exploring other areas of the forest, hence losing the possibility of finding a potential habitat better than trees.
As high school students, do you prefer to keep an open mind like an eagle, or do you stick to your beloved tree, ignoring all other spots in the forest like a koala bear? As grade 11 students, who are on the verge of stepping into a new life in university, we should be exploring various fields of study rather than focusing on a certain subject single-mindedly. Keeping our options open and exploring different areas will help us find our true academic love.
High school is too early for most students to claim that they have experienced enough of the world in order to make a wise decision. We cannot expect sixteen-year-olds to decide the field of study they will pursue for the rest of their lives as the world of knowledge is way broader than what we, high school students, can imagine. We are simply too young to have experienced various aspects of this world. Given this fact, students in the United States can apply to post-secondary education by the university. US universities give students an ocean of possible choices where students can explore different programs, which could help them to better decide their future career. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, about 80 percent of students in the United State end up changing their major at least once. Therefore, it is beneficial for us to expand our options and adopt new views to increase the possibility of finding the area we love.
Apart from exploring the world of knowledge, by experimenting with different subjects, students could also discover themselves, learning more about their interests, their strengths and their weaknesses. Before I had a chance to know my potentials and capabilities, many of my grade 11 friends who had taken physics tried to dissuade me from taking physics as they said the course was extremely hard and challenging. However, this semester, I had my first physics class and gradually found out that I was made for physics. I was good with numbers and could understand concepts others couldn’t. By taking a step forward and taking a new and unfamiliar course, I found my strengths and potentials, giving myself an option to change. It is crucial that we start to be open-minded and understand ourselves better before we can decide what area to pursue in the future.
Keeping an open mind is also beneficial for those students who decide on a field of study early on in their high school years since besides their major, they also need to find what their favourite minors are, which requires more than a single focus. In this modern and competitive world, most majors are interrelated. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of most areas, minors become an important factor to be competitive in society. For instance, the age of studying just and only chemistry is over. Many people chose biological chemistry, physical chemistry, pharmaceutical chemistry to be more outstanding in the group of ambitious youngsters. We should not only decide on our major but also consider our minors. We need to be open-minded and keep options open in order to be able to explore different possibilities. In order to be successful and competitive, students need to have multiple interests rather than a single one.
Therefore, as grade 11 students, the best we could do is to be receptive to more ideas and welcome different opportunities to find the area or rather the areas we would be willing to spend the rest of our lives in. Steve Jobs once said that “The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.”