Success, as defined by others, is no success at all.
When I was in the 8th grade, I was president of the Honor's Society. Quite the accolade. It came with the privelege of making the 8th grade graduation speech. When it was time to write the speech, I couldn't have been more excited! "Finally, a platform!" I thought. Unfortunately, my English teacher, Ms. Cogan thought differently. See, although I had excellent grades in her class, when I showed her my draft of the graduation speech, she looked down on it with disdain. I couldn't understand why. It was after all set to the rythm of Coolio's 'Gangsta's Paradise,' one of the hottest songs out at that time. The content was thorough too. Noooooo, she would rather have one of her favorite writers from her classes write the graduation speech and have me read/say/deliver it for the graduation ceremonies. HUH??? I thought it was I who was in the position to make a speech.
How was I expected to make a speech that I didn't write?
Why wasn't I allowed to write my own speech?
Finally, why didn't the speech writer deliver her own speech?? If the writer had delivered the speech, I wouldn't mind at all sitting down for the entire graduation ceremony... in fact, give me any seat in the house at that point!
In any case, I put those thoughts out of my head and went with the flow. I mused on the implications, but thought 'whatever.' The speech was about some tapestry (which, btw, I've never seen a tapestry before in my whole life... i'm more of a patchwork quilt kind of lady).
but...
I submitted to the powers that be.
I delivered the tapestry speech, written largely by Melissa and Ms. Cogan.
Then, I kept it movin, never putting the Coolio version out of my mind.
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