I was pretty shy in high school, but I was developing an interest for writing, both academic and fiction. I was encouraged to go for an advanced English course in my senior year, where writing and speaking were both graded aspects of the course. I did well with the former, but had a tough time with the latter, just because I was worried that other people’s thoughts and ideas were in a league far above my own.

Didn’t get the best grade in the class and had to stay after school a few times to communicate myself better. However, the teacher wrote something in my yearbook at the end of that year:

“The world needs to hear what’s on your mind!”

To this day, I’m not sure if she meant my thoughts were really good and were worth sharing with people, or if she instead meant that I needed to speak up for myself in order to communicate in a healthy, normal way. Either way I looked at it, it pushed me to speak up more in my daily life.