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Speak Positive Change

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How Positive Change is Derived From Negative Experiences In the life of a teenager, negative experiences are sometimes inevitable. As adolescents transition into young adults, there i’s no doubt that they would sometimes feel down because of a few traumatizing experiences. These negative experiences could range from a whole variety of reasons. In fact, sometimes adolescents feels as if they have no control over the situation which is evident with the character Melinda in the book Speak. On the other hand, teens are sometimes subjected to very sudden harsh and traumatic changes in one’s life which they have to cope with and learn from which can be seen with Andy and Shane in the book Skud. Along with that, there were and still are other teenage …show more content…

This is evident in the novel Speak, since Melinda goes through a traumatizing school year with frequent bullying as well as a sexual assault. Not only is she able to pull through ultimately, she also accepts what happened and asserts that she is willing to learn from the experience. For instance, near the end of the book, Melinda asserts “IT happened. There is no avoiding IT, no forgetting. No running away, or flying, or burying or hiding. Andy Evans raped in August when I was drunk and too young to know what was happening. It wasn’t my fault. And I’m not going to let it kill me. I can grow” (Anderson 198). Again, this quote greatly implies that Melinda has developed a growth mindset which has allowed her to move on from this traumatizing experience and she is essentially stating that she will not contemplate on the horrific incident endlessly but she will instead try to learn and acquire some insights after going through the frequent bullying and the assault. Melinda’s experience is also extremely similar to Maddy’s experience of being sexually assaulted in the book The Pain Eater. Maddy also contemplated on the horrific incident a lot throughout the book, but ultimately, she acknowledged that contemplating on the incident over and over will not change anything and she decided that it was time to stop this mental illness and learn to move on. Melinda also states “let’s talk about it” (Anderson 198) towards her art teacher at the very end of the book when her art teacher inquired her about her school year. This passage reflects her growth mindset even more since this is strong evidence that Melinda is now willing to open up and talk about her troubles. Although Melinda suffered through a school year full of

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