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Reflective Essay On Slam Poetry

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“You learn something new every day,” my father had always said to me. Whether it’s a fact or something you learned about yourself or others, the world has so much to teach you. When I was in seventh grade, I lacked confidence in myself. I was scared of reading in front of others and messing up. I felt like a mistake. I was terrible under pressure. I could always feel my heart pounding inside my chest whenever I had to present a project in front of the class. I was like this until one of my favorite teachers, Ms.Secko taught me lessons that I will never forgot. She taught me confidence and character. One day, Ms.Secko assigned the class a project on slam poetry. I didn’t even know what a slam poem was until she explained it to us. A slam poem was a poem that was memorized and spoken in front of an audience. As soon as I heard those words, my heart trembled a little. The project was composed of several parts. First, you had to pick a poem that was more than 16 lines and memorize it. Second, you had to answer 4 questions about why you chose the poem. Then, you had to make a visual representation on how you interpreted it. Last but not least, you had to present to poem to your classmates without looking on a reference sheet of the poem. It was a lot of work. But we had plenty of time to work on it. At first, I doubted myself. There was no way I could possibly memorize something AND present it in front of the class all by myself. I felt hopeless. It took me hours to search for a poem online. I looked on almost every poem site known to man but I just couldn’t find one that spoke to me. I asked my dad if he knew any good poems. He said that I should perform his favorite poem, “If” by Rudyard Kipling. The poem was colossal. It looked like it could fill a football stadium because it was so lengthy. I carefully read over the poem and realized how important its message was. I was really intrigued by the line, “If you could meet with Triumph and Disasters and treat those two imposters just the same.” It made me think a little about what the poem could mean. It took me a while but I figured out its meaning. It means that you treat your successes and shortcomings the same way. You shouldn’t be too

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