samples of the students' speeches

GIORGIO’S SPEECH

I seized this opportunity to tell you about two things that in my view are basic in everybody’s life: childhood and friendship.

Infancy is very important because it is the first phase of a person’s life, and it is the period when you are given those principles on which you will build your own future. Regarding childhood and friendship, I would like to tell you about “The Little Prince" by Antoine De Saint-Exupéry, a book that I think many of you read when they were children, like me, but which I did not immediately understand when I was a child, I could not grasp the meaning of the messages that the author wanted to transmit. The story is a lot more than a simple tale for children, so much that rereading it as teenagers or young adults may allow you, as it has been for myself, to catch new sides and meanings that you may not have thought of before.

Although it is a very simple story, it contains several themes which encourage us to reflect. The main topic is childhood, which is described by the writer as the most beautiful period of a person’s life. A sentence that struck me was "All grown-ups were once children...but only few of them remember it.” It is true that when we grow up we have more responsibilities and so we tend to forget what friendship, true love and imagination are. I can see that a lot of people are like that, they change when they become adults, and they don't want to listen to their child who is in the depths of their heart and that is why they lose hope and their ability to dream. I wish I will never forget my childhood, even when I am older, and I will always be able to listen to the little child in my heart, who can play and dream. As Antoine De Saint Exupéry says, “Only children know what they are looking for.”

As I said, the second topic in the book I want to tell you about is friendship, which in my view represents one of the most important things in life. A friend is perhaps the most precious thing we can have, one with whom we can always be ourselves, someone who knows all our qualities and defects and despite this doesn't ask us to change, a person to whom we feel we can tell our thoughts without fear of being judged. Personally thanks to friendship I have succeeded in overcoming things that I would never have thought of overcoming, I managed to be happy even when everything went wrong.

In “The Little prince” the most beautiful friendship is the one between the Little Prince and the Fox. The fox teaches the Little Prince the deepest meaning of friendship, which is a bond of sincere affection based on a shared and unique way of perceiving the world.

As a matter of fact, It is through our heart, much more than through our eyes that we can observe and understand the world around us, therefore what really counts is not the material possession of things but the affection that we feel towards those people with whom we have established a deep bond. So I would like to conclude by quoting one of the most famous sentences of the whole novel: "One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes."

Giorgio – Italy

MARTINA’S SPEECH

This is the story of a very important person to me, a close friend that I know very well, in the same way as I know his story and how it changed his life.

Let's start from a few years ago, when I also thought that XXXXX was a common boy who liked to have fun, drink alcohol at weekends, go clubbing and go out with friends.

He comes from a today’s ordinary family: his father works in a factory, his mother is unemployed and his younger sister goes to school. A few years ago, due to work problems, YYYYY, who is XXXXX’s father, fell into a severe depression which led him to consider suicide several times. His family had always been very strong but it was about to collapse. Then, after a long series of meetings both with a psychologist and a specialist by the medical care as well as with a family, who has always supported him, that bad period came to an end. This was was also due to the new job he found.

But this is just a part of XXXXX's story I want to tell you.

About a year ago XXXXX had a car accident. He was driving his car and he was together with his girlfriend, ZZZZZ, and another couple of their friends. It was night, the car was going fast on a desert road when XXXXX had a sleep shot and crashed into a guardrail. Luckily, all of them only had to wear a neck collar for a few days, while the car was completely destroyed.

When they arrived at the hospital by ambulance that night, the doctors took a blood test to XXXXX and what came out shocked his friends, but especially his family members. Traces of methanphetamine were found in his blood. That substance is a potent and dangerous synthetic drug, which cost him the withdrawal of the driving licence on the spot.

The version XXXXX declared to the police was that the day before he was celebrating his birthday with a group of friends and he got drunk. Then at the end of the evening he felt very thirsty and sick and he was offered some water from a bottle, which was given to him by a passer-by. He must have been unaware of what it contained. In this way he was able to relieve in part the family's sorrow, but not to avoid the trial he was subjected to.

Following that episode many other things come out about what he had done with his friends: they were used to buying marijuana, moreover, they also used cocaine and who knows what else when they went dancing. His family was informed about that and for sure that was a deep, great displeasure to them. However, they continued to believe in him, never leaving him alone in dealing with the difficulties.

It always seems so obvious to say that the family is important, but most people don't know the true value of it. If there isn’t a constant support from those we love that is to say our family, it's difficult to overcome troubles, frustrations or disappointments and so taking the wrong path may seem the most natural choice..

Sometimes we think that all the friends we have are true friends, but friendship can be called as such only when it can survive despite difficulties or hardships. It is in those devastating situations that we can perceive and feel the love of those we really can count on who are our parents, our brothers and sisters. We know they will always be there for us, at all times and whatever it may happen.

It's thanks to his family that XXXXX gave up any type of drugs and managed to find a good job with his father. He also got by to pay off all the money his parents had lent him for the lawyer and he finally bought a new car too.

Now XXXXX lives with his girlfriend and everything is going for the best.

I believe everything can be solved with the right people nearby.

So, what I would like to tell you is first of all, watch out! Keep away from those people who pretend to be your friends, but lead you astray; look for real, good friends; secondly, if you are lucky and have a caring family or friends, be thankful to them, always put them first because they are an invaluable treasure.

Martina - Italy

GIORGIA’S SPEECH

My story is about prejudice.Nowadays prejudices are becoming more and more common in the society in which we live: these can manifest themselves in serious or less serious forms. It is common that people rely only on the exterior aspect, judging others by their clothes, this is especially the case with young people where boys or girls who are not considered "fashionable" are often excluded from the "Group" and set aside. Other forms of prejudice, in my opinion the most serious ones, are those related to skin colour and religion.

I think this is wrong and totally unfair because we should learn to know people before judging them, we must try to understand that the diversity of others is not something to tease but rather it is something that can enrich us by making us unique and inimitable. A famous example is given by The Intouchables , a 2011 French film, a buddy comedy- drama film, which tells of the unlikely friendship between Philippe, a rich quadriplegic, and Driss, a young delinquent Senegalese who is hired as a personal French caretaker. The film excited me a lot for a variety of reasons. For instance, it shows that sometimes life can really be surprising especially when we understand that our best friend is not necessarily the one who looks like us but it is a person who, maybe, does not have so much in common with us. It is perhaps thanks to those differences that he can understand us better than those who are “so close” to us.

Prejudices have been around us since we were little. I remember that when I was in the first grade there was a Colombian girl in my class: she never talked to anyone and she used to isolate and I simply thought she didn’t like us; Then, one day, I decided to talk to her to see if I was right or wrong . To my surprise I found out that even if she was very shy, she really wanted to play with everyone and she was suffering because we had excluded her before. We had acted in a silly way, but I realized it later. She felt excluded because some of us considered her different. From that day onward I did all my best to make her feel at ease with the other children and of course I wanted to give a good example to my classmates: I sat next to her in class and I happily greeted her so that the rest of the kids would do the same; I enjoyed helping her carrying out the tasks when she was in difficulty. However, the most important step was to invite her to my house together with other girls from our class. I discovered that she was very sweet, nice and generous: she just needed to be loved and appreciated by her peers. On the day of her birthday we made her a surprise: we entered the classroom with a birthday cake and gifts singing “happy birthday”. She was extremely happy and she finally understood that no one was excluding her because everyone was treating her friendly.

That comes from my childhood memories...but it is thanks to this that I’m certain that prejudices have to disappear because you must be aware of any outcomes you could cause on people before judging someone without knowing them. It is true, we are humans and we may, wrongly, highlight prejudices as an excuse to justify a sort of self defence, because we are not ready to meet diversity yet.

However, Have you ever thought that the excluded “member of the Group” could be just you? Maybe yes or maybe no…let’s think about it!

Giorgia – Italy

FEDERICA’S SPEECH

When I was asked to write a speech I did not know exactly which topic to concentrate on, then, after thinking about it, I realized that what I wanted to convey was courage. We are teenagers, therefore I know for sure that fear and anxiety are our daily bread. It is the time when everything changes: friends, school, but above all our personality and our body change. In my opinion, one of the things that characterize adolescence is greater freedom, because it is right now that you understand what it means to be free. This taste of freedom attracts you and you fool yourself, you think you are perfectly autonomous, mature, ready to face any problem; But you know perfectly well that you need the support, comfort, and affection of the people you care about. There is a need for help and courage especially because during adolescence you just begin to see the ugliness and squalor of the world and therefore you must try in all possible ways to preserve its beauty and the positive sides.

A really inspiring character to me was Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of the novel The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. I read this novel last summer and was deeply impressed by Holden's sincerity and purity, he dreams of "becoming the catcher in the rye" because he wants to protect children, who he feels are innocent, from the dangers of life. So, in his mind he imagines being on a cliff in a rye field where the kids play and he keeps them from falling down.

Holden, like all teenagers, is facing the period of discovery of the "big" world where everything seems, and perhaps really is, very different from the old world, which he is forced to abandon, and only in the end he will understand that the real way to resist the new world is not to take refuge in a ranch to the ends of the earth, as he was going to do, so as to keep on living in the same way as when he was a child, but the right way is to face fear and reality without running away. It will be his sister Phobie who will prevent him from fleeing and tell him to go back home. To Holden, she represents purity and innocence, that is all he cannot find in a world where everything appears superficial, petty and full of compromises.

It may seem insignificant, but to me it was a really enlightening reading, it helped me a lot and made me realize that "the catchers in the rye" exist and so I decided that in my life I would do my best to become one of them.

So I'm telling you, "find a cause to fight for and live for it"; escape is never the right thing.

Federica - Italy

GERMAN TEAM’S SPEECH

Erasmus speech

Take a minute and think about the experiences and impressions which changed your life! - break -

We are sure you know that there are places, people and situations which changed and will change you. Maybe some of you are afraid of turning into a different person just because of making experiences in your life which are going to have an impact on you. That’s why it is so important to have someone who is always there for you, even if you think you are alone. Especially in this part of your life – the part of growing up. And this is the time we are all in this together. In the moment we are right between our childhood and being an adult. We think this is a very important step in our life because we have to make a lot of life changing decisions and we are getting more and more responsibility. In the past we wanted to be a child forever and never to grow up. But growing up isn’t a bad thing, we are just learning. And now this time is passing by so fast and we make a lot of experiences. In the end these are the things which made us to the persons who we are today and who we will be tomorrow.

We came up with this topic while listening to Shawn Mendes’ song “Understand” in which he wrote some inspiring lines about growing up and life changing and we want to share the song with you today.

- song -

As we all know growing up isn`t always easy and as Shawn Mendes sings: "You can´t hold on to the old you." You not only experience good things in your life, but you learn from your defeats. And these are the ones which make you stronger. Referring to this Renée will tell you now a story of her life which made an impact on her behaviour.

- Renée´s story -

"My story is about sense: I had a problem with a friend of mine and trying to find a solution, I talked about it with other people. I made the mistake, that I talked about it with too many people. Of course that's why she eventually found out and although I only wanted to find a solution for our problem, to her it looked like I was talking bad about her behind her back. She was very angry with me. She didn't even want to look at me. And for a long time she talked to everyone as if I wasn't even existing. That time was a very difficult one for me and her behavior hit me very hard. So hard that I promised myself I would never again do such a thing. In the end this time made me a better person and I learned that bad experiences are good too. I learned that bad experiences make sense. Otherwise we wouldn't be who we are today and we wouldn't have learned what we had to learn for life. Of course when you´re in that situation it is hard and you may even think your world is breaking down. But take my word, some time you will see the sense in everything." – written by Renée

But growing up isn´t only a bad thing there are also some good aspects about it. Sometimes you have to overcome yourselves to get new self confidence and power. Julia had such an experience and now she wants to tell us about it.

- Julia´s story -

"I want to talk about fear. I, for myself, was a pretty careful and fearful person. One day I saw a video of a boy doing a bungee jump. I told my friend I wanted to do that one day too and as she answered I would not do it, because I would be far too scared. So we had a bet. Somehow it hit me that she said that I would be too scared, although I didn´t really want to believe it. And because it bothered me that much, I decided to do the jump. On the way up I must say I was excited, but somehow I was concerned I would jump. In the end I tried to think about something else and just did it. It was a great experience and I really enjoyed it. I learned that experiences are not only bad; they are also chances for everyone to find his own way. This jump was a positive experience for me, because I learned that I´m not really fearful and I learned that fears are normal things in life which everyone has. With this jump I got the chance to see if I´m brave enough. In the end I´m really happy and I will never forget this moment. I think this jump symbolized that you don’t have to be afraid of the future. No matter what happens you´ll have something you are afraid of, but everyone is brave enough to resolve their fears." – written by Julia

From these two examples you can see that every life is variegated and that´s what it is all about because everybody is different. But as we said in the beginning: when you know where your heart belongs and if you have somebody you can count on, you don´t have to be afraid of your future. You're gonna feel like that's where you're supposed to be. You're not going to feel out of place anymore. And you don't have to pretend that it's easy all the time. You just let it go, and grow with it. And you can't hold on to the old you, or the old this, or the old that. Because you know you change, and it's not changing in a bad way, it's just changing because that's what happens in life and no matter what happens to you: you stay the same person. Stay true to yourself because you are just learning and nobody is perfect, so it isn´t always bad to make mistakes. That´s why changes are so important. Your life is a gift, you shouldn´t care about what others think about you, just live your life and enjoy it. Even if you think at the moment everything is changing, the place where your heart feels at home doesn´t change. In the end we just want to reassure you to try something new and don´t give up if something went wrong. Our final message for you is: Changing is just simply growing up, see it in a positive way!

written by Isabella and Victoria