My Language Challenges – Last part

Then when I came to USA, now I have almost forgot English, because I tried to not to speak English to learn Spanish, so again I had a challenge for learning another language, but I was ready, now I knew how to do it, again the first day, I went to college, Diablo valley college and registered for the first semester. They told me to better learn English, get the Speech-120 class, which was a primitive speech class, then I thought let me get one other speech class too, so I got speech 120, and speech 130, as I remember, which then I figured out that the second class was interstate competitions for speech and debates between universities.

Again a new challenge, but I was always amazed with great speakers, people like MLK or Kennedy, so I wanted to try it. In debates I felt like I am full of words, but I could not transform all of thoughts into words, it was a little hard, I remember me and Angelo in the first debate that we participated, we got into finals, and got into 4^th place, it was really funny, because our first hope for final lost in second round, we lost to saint Marys college, they won the competition in that tournament, I was great in answering and re battling, and Angelo was great in structuring things, so we were a perfect team. On the other hand I got twice second place in speech competitions, in a persuasion speech, I had propaganda speech which I got 3^rd in that competition, and I had an informative speech about Iran, which I got into the second place that term.

But these were not the real challenge. Every semester, DVC held a speech night, which best speakers perform, and they are people who have done these kind of activities for years, since high school or .. one of my brilliant friends, Alex Rigali, was in the list of speech giving, but he had problem on that day, so John Haneckak our professor (who was a great personality, mayor of Pleasant hill, and influenced me a lot) , asked me do you want to give your speech tonight about Iran?  You know what was my answer, although I did not go through it, but every challenge is an opportunity, so again I said yes definitely. I had 6 hours to get ready for the speech night, to speak in front of 500 people. I focused on the speech that night, and read it a lot. At the moment of the performance, someone had to introduce me, she said, Kamran is from Iran, and came here six months ago, and is taking speech-120 basic speech class, and English is not his first language, and now he is giving a speech to you guys, I went and it was a great and memorable night. Every challenge is an opportunity to grow, whether you lose or win, it helps you to grow, so take it.