This year, hundreds of students participated in speech all over Minnesota. Here at Prior Lake High School, the speech team had over 100 speakers. Next year, it could be even more.

For the people reading this article thinking it’s another shameless plug for speech, they’re right. However, unlike all the speech kids shouting “join speech” to various people from different circles of this school, this article doesn’t intend to pressure but persuade anyone who reads it to make a decision they won’t regret.

Speech has something for just about everyone. Whether it’s acting and becoming a character, informing and persuading, or even if someone likes to argue, speech has a place for them.

According to the Prior Lake High School Speech website, the speech team here at Prior Lake offers 13 different categories with a variety of interests. Two types of categories exist: interpretation categories for people who like to act and public address categories for folks who like to show their knowledge or persuade others. There are also many categories that are not shown on the website but may be available later in the season. 

Whether it’s an interpretation or public address category, opportunities for learning are endless. The teachings can often come in the form of fun facts.

Of course, in categories like Informative Speaking, where speakers prepare a presentation meant to inform someone about a topic of their choosing, any speech seen or given can provide someone with new information about a variety of topics. However, even in a category like Drama, an interpretation category with a focus on dramatic acting, many speeches include statistics about the world to help contextualize the contents of their speech.

While many think of learning as what goes on in a classroom, or what should happen, the school of speech also provides a more practical education.

“I learned how to dictate properly,” said Charlie Olson, a senior in the Poetry category. 

Knowledge of how to appear confident in times of anxiety, how to convey a message to a difficult audience, or how to accept defeat like a winner can be learned every single day and new lessons always fill their place. For the mind that loves to grow, speech is a paradise.

Even if learning and personalization aren’t persuasive enough, the main selling point of speech, for almost everyone involved, is the people.

“The variety of people,” said Cory Le, a senior in the category of Extemporaneous Reading, is his favorite thing about speech.

When traveling around the state to different schools, students in speech get the opportunity to meet and befriend new people they would never encounter in any other way. 

With every good thing, there are drawbacks, such as the very deterring fact that many meets, or speech competitions, require individuals to meet at the high school around 6 o’clock on Saturday mornings. However, the inconvenience of this early rise becomes worthwhile, even ignoring the potential benefits of a more consistent sleep schedule, when boarding a bus full of friendly people in the same boat. They’re all tired people, ready to try their best and have fun while doing it.

Throughout the 2024 speech season, many students grew and changed because of their connection to speech, myself included. I mourned the end of my first and last season of speech, and I cursed my past self for making the mistake of not joining speech sooner. I hope you don’t make the same mistake.