Personal
Narrative Speech
My name is Yeong Won Jeon, and this is my
personal narrative speech.
I’m not going to try to give you some good,
motivational speech. Actually, I hope you all don’t fall asleep while I use my
five minutes.
Anyways, a personal narrative speech is
something meaningful that happened to one’s life, right? But I didn’t have an event
that is fantastic or long enough for our valuable five minutes, so instead of
talking about one subject, I decided to tell you various stories of my life.
Stories that relate to one of the most
important values in life.
Stories of courage.
I will tell you about its various
perspectives based on my stories.
For example, my first time drinking
alcohol. I was only six years old when I did.
At that time, I believe most of you did
what I did, which is pouring water into those little glasses of soju and mimic
adults drinking alcohol. But one day, while pulling those silly tricks, I dared
to drink a real glass of soju as a bluff in front of my cousins. So that day I
went home drunk, waving my arms, and puked in the bathroom. And I never
repeated that childish act ever again.
On the other hand, there’s the time when I
was about thirteen years old, living in Canada, and was addicted to doing dares
with my friends. At first, they were not extreme. They were simple things, such
as eating a pepper, or standing up in the middle of the class. However, it was
different when my home-stay family, their friends and I went camping to a
cabin. It started off with putting matches on your skin after just blowing them
out. I won’t get into the specifics; at some point of the game, the house was
almost set on fire.
Like this, foolish or inadequate courage
leads to problems or mishap.
And another common subject regarding
courage is first love or confession. I assume many of you have read or seen, or
maybe even experienced how courage is important in these situations, but I just
want to tell you what it’d been like for me, and what you and I must do later
in the future. And this is also what I mainly want to tell you.
It was my third grade in middle school.
There was a transfer student in my class. I don’t want to mention her name, so
let’s call her A. This A, she was beautiful without make-up, was kind to everybody,
and studied well, too. It was a matter of time that she soon became famous in
our class. I also talked with her various times and sometimes studied together
for exams during class. It wasn’t much after that I realized that I liked her. However,
we did not really stay close or play with each other so we simply stayed as
far-but-not-so-far friends: the kind that greets each other but doesn’t really
talk, and mostly communicates through KakaoTalk. Mainly we were just a bit
close because we sat near each other. But on my birthday, she gave me a big box
of chocolates and candies. This surprised me a lot. Then, my friends around me
urged me to confess, telling me that she might like me too. So one day, I
decided to do it, and I bought a large teddy bear to give her. I decided to wait
a month and do it at the end of finals, so that I wouldn’t bother her studies.
And so I waited and waited for that date. However, when the awaited morning
finally arrived, I realized I couldn’t do it. It embarrassed me to think of the
consequences. Also, my parents’ nagging about being in a relationship
discouraged me. About how you cannot study with a girlfriend, and that you’d
always have one in universities, blah blah blah...Now I know that’s all a whole
bunch of lie; It will always be hard to get a girlfriend for me. Anyways, in
the end, I left the doll inside the closet again, and the teddy bear is still
there, well hidden from my parents’ view.
After graduation we separated, me to KMLA,
and A to a normal high school. A few weeks ago, during a conversation with her,
A announced that she had a boyfriend.
Now I regret, and wonder what would have
happened if I had not given up the last opportunity I had. It was kind of a
lesson for me, and I hope you don’t do the same too. When you see an
opportunity, do not be afraid; Always pluck up the courage to use the chance
and be the winner.
Use courage well. Take your chances.
Thank you.