900 words

Note: I was asked to speak about women at Carnegie Mellon’s 2005 Community Collage, our freshman orientation diversity forum. I struggled for months to write a speech that I thought would be appropriate. Then, two days before I was to give the speech, I scrapped it and completely rewrote it. This is the result.

Hi everyone, I’m Kristan. Let me start by saying that I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to make this speech interesting and applicable to everyone. Kind of ironic, huh? I’m supposed to speak to a group of 700 people, about diversity, and I want to appeal to all of them? No way. There is no way.

So what I decided to do instead was to talk about something — or rather someone — who is really important to me. My mom.

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First I’d like to say that there’s nothing quite so scary as driving along an unfamiliar interstate (supposedly a tollway but with NO booths in sight) half past midnight when you’re low on gas and can’t stop thinking about how much your surroundings look like where they filmed the Blair Witch Project.

Until, of course, you get lost in the shady drug-trafficking district of a small town in Pennsylvania and all you really want to do is find your aunt’s house where there’s a bowl of candy, Simply Orange juice, and a plush freshly made bed waiting for you.

Yeah, I had a great Saturday night.

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