First Draft for "This I believe"

Hello, everyone. If it is not this speech, I bet that most of my fellow students had not yet pondered this philosophical question of “what I believe.” And yes, I am one of you guys who find it hard to answer this question. As a result, instead of getting into the point of what my faith is, I will talk about my passion instead.

Music is my life passion. However, I never knew my greatest passion would lead to one of my toughest challenges. Last summer, I started an internship at a music company. Seeing my potentials, the company decided to let me produce a song about the compelling history of my city. 

As both the singer and the lyricist, I was only given five days to write and record the song. I was simultaneously excited and concerned about the heavy task in that most of my city's history is buried underground due to the bombing during WWII.

After three days of visiting the oldest neighborhoods in the city, I discovered a story that triggered my sparks: a pilot was to leave for war the day before his wedding. Before he left on his jet, he circled the airport three times and dropped a letter to his fiancée, promising to marry her if he came back safely. 

I was deeply moved by this tale, but I wanted to get more in depth background knowledge before I started writing. Therefore, I spent three days in Chongqing Municipal Library to find more evidence. I even found a writer who had interviewed the pilot's wife. He told me more about the couple's love. After the research, I spent a whole day in my room, picking my lyrics word for word.

When I played the demo for the director, he was incredibly impressed, and he even let me use the finest studio in the city to record my song. After this, I went over the standard process of a new musician to produce the music video. When I held the first copy of the CD in my hand, I could not control my excitement. I repeated in my mind over and over "I am an musician now." I realized that this could be the beginning of my music career.

After I moved away from my family three years ago, it was not uncommon for me to face challenges in my life, but I always remembered one thing: it is in times of great pressure that wonderful works can be produced. And this I believe.

Proposal for Final Project

My final project "This I believe" speech will be talking about the alternation of the insight of myself, or in another way, how I changed to be the person I am over the years after I came to Cheshire Academy.

I am sure that no matter how mature you are right now, when you were my age, everyone had suffered from being lost in this beautiful world, even losing their identity. Not even my favorite writers Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. However, it is the progress we make, the every step we take at this age makes it the best years of our lives. And this is the reason why this is my senior speech is going to be about this.

I will carry my topic with a few stories in order to involve the audience and not to be boring.

First I will talk about the story of how I became a Post Graduate student in Cheshire as well as my feeling of being one. This is a very unique identity as both an international student and also a PG. To explain the reason for the fact, I will then take a step forward and talk about how I changed from a student who loved math and physics to be more into history and social science.

The second change I will talk about is the change of being abroad. Being away with family was not easy for a fifteen-year-old. When I packed my stuff and went to the airport, I literally felt my world was only a bag by my side. I have faced challenges that I had no idea I could overcome again and again. Every time, there are a hundred thoughts in my mind, but what I have never thought of is to give up. I feel like this would be a good topic because it reflects the most authentic feeling deep in my heart.

Outline for speech "This I believe"

Thesis: my speech will focus on changes. (1) the change I faced after coming to a America (2)change on my personal pursuit

point i
i will emphasize on my separation with family. I have to live by myself at the age of 15, facing every challenge with my bare arms.

point ii
As I gained more knowledge, I started to ponder what my life should be like. I changed from a boy who take a vow to achieve greatness to a man who tries to experience the true taste of life.

Reflection on the old "This I believe speeches"

I first read the one by the German student. She added a lot of sense humors, for example, saying what she always expected was a letter from Hogwarts. Other dictions like her families furniture "floating on the Atlantic" was also very vivid. Her words gave her speech a graphic sense of reality as an internationals student who moved to America with her family. It is a really good speech and I don't think there is anything bad about it.

The second speech I read had me confused in the beginning. I did not understand how "a life like TV show" is "where we are either always in the right, or are always forgiven." After finishing the first page I still did not see what her points are. In my speech I will probably give out my points straightforward.

What I learned from this two speeches is that: first, I need more sense of humor. When I read the first speech, my interest was immediately grasped. I want the same effect on my audience. Second, I need to be more straightforward about my opinion, in other words, what is the thing that I believe, which the second speech did not do se well. I will mind that.

Teach a skill video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jxr-y-tc2E

At one point of our lives, I am sure all of us sitting here had developed an impulse to start writing. Whether it's your own novel, or journals. You want to pick up your pens to create your own world. Today, I am going to tell you how to start writing.

First, you don't have to know what you are going to write before you start writing. It is not that material does not matter: To be clear, I am not here to tell you about your contents; instead, I am here to tell you how to make writing your unalienable habit. Being physically ready is not a key factor for being a successful writer -- many writers, like one of my favorite Dostoyevsky suffered from his poverty and always write in a poor condition. Simply pick up your pen and sit in front of your desk, and I can tell you, you are ready.

Second, you need to grow a pattern. My favorite writer Haruki Murakami gets up at 5am every morning, runs for two hours and write until noon. As students, we don't have to follow such pattern, but certainly we need to develop our own. A pattern helps you to produce works steadily, which is an important premise for quality.

Third, and this is a good advise for beginners: if it is really hard for you to think about something to write about, you can practice on a different genre of writing, or even write about characters, scenes and dialogues, which are less time and energy consuming.

Literature is one of the most direct way for us to reflect the thoughts on our mind. Through writing, we will not only get the chance to introspect, we can also develop our ability to express our ideas, which is an essential social skill in modern day society.

notes

First, decide what you actually want to write. Getting down the bare minimums for your piece will help you construct a bare draft for whatever it is you’re planning to end with. Either jot it off on a sticky note and put it next to your notebook, or write it on the top of your Word document.

How long is whatever you’re trying to write? What are you writing about? Are there any other requirements you have to worry about? While you might know exactly what you need before you start to write, putting it down is a good way to focus your mind on exactly what you need to accomplish.

Make sure you’re interested in what you’re writing. If you aren’t fascinated with the subject you’re writing about, it will almost certainly show in your writing. If you don’t have a choice as to what to write about, try to find some element in your subject that interests you, and focus on it. If you’re just writing to finish whatever it is you’re supposed to write, getting yourself to write it will take much longer than if you take just a little time to get yourself interested.

Outline the basics of what you’re trying to get done. The most monotonous example of this, of course, is the five-paragraph essay most high schoolers are forced to learn about. While an overly-forced rubric can lead to an unoriginal paper, some structure can only help with your quickly jotting out a draft, which is the most important part of writing. If you have five pages to fill on a paper, decide how long you will write about each different point you have to make.

Outlining also helps with creative writing: even though creativity can’t be forced, it helps immensely to have a general idea of what’s going on in your story. Just look at Harry Potter, which concluded last month: the final book had strong ties with the six before it, even though it was written a full decade after the original book. Without some sense of direction, J. K. Rowling would never have been able to create such a powerful conclusion.

Stop everything else and concentrate on writing. The draft of any piece is almost always the hardest thing to write, since you have nothing to base your writing on. While you’re writing your draft, try to concentrate on it as much as possible. Turn off your instant messenger, if you have one on. Don’t take a break to check your email. Any interruption might destroy your focus on your piece, and it is far harder to return to writing a draft than it is to write it all in one go.

If your piece is a long one, this might not be entirely possible. Still, try to set aside at least an hour at a time when you’re trying to write, so you can get into the flow of your writing.

Lower your standards. Writer’s block really originates from high standards: often, you will sit down to write but not like what you’re producing. The trick to eliminating this? Stop worrying so much over whether or not every little bit you write is a good as it can be. Either way, you are probably going to have to return to your draft several times an revise it: don’t attempt to revise every line as you write it.

If you have a section you think is of a particularly low quality, make a note of it, but keep writing. Revision is when you’ll go back and fix all the errors you’ve written. The draft is just your chance to write quickly and get the foundations of your piece over with.

Take your time before revising. You won’t be able to assess your piece immediately after you’ve written it: give yourself time before looking over your work. Read a book, talk to friends, perhaps exercise… just make sure that when you go back to read over your draft, you’re in a different mindset than you were when you were first writing. If you spend too much time looking at your work, you won’t be able to revise objectively. There’s no rush to finishing your work after you’ve begun: just take your time and you’ll be far more able to produce a quality piece of work.