I remember watching President Obama’s inauguration speech on youtube; I don’t think I fully grasped the importance of his speech, but I do remember thinking about what a great speaker he was and how neatly structured his speech was. He was brimming with confidence, even while he prepared to lead the already-worn Americans into another string of battles with the economy; this was something that I envied – how could he stand so tall, even with the weight of the world on his shoulders?

We are currently reading about the Civil War in my summer US History class, and I recently came upon an excerpt about the Gettysburg Address, delivered by Honest Abe. This was all too familiar for me, as my mom made me memorize this speech when I was in the 6th grade. Needless to say, the memorization process was complete torture for me, and I did not stop to appreciate the true meaning of the speech. But now, as I read about the speech in my history book, I can realize what a huge impact this simple 3-minute speech had on the people of the Union. As my history book says, his speech was what made the people say “the United States is” and not “the United States are”.

I have to say, if my speech teacher had shown our class this blog post at the beginning of the class, I would have been a lot more enthused about starting the required-to-graduate class.