My Inspiration

Being the procrastinator that I am, I always put the hardest things off until the very end. Like my English 312 Persuasive Writing Class. It's my last year at BYU and I saved that precious little (but oh so BIG) class until the very end. Lucky me! 

This class requires a Researched Argument Oral Report for our final project. A couple of things that I hate about this assignment: 

RESEARCHED YUCK!!!

ARGUMENT I am a terrible arguer....

ORAL I could do without speaking in public...

REPORT That one speaks for itself

I have put off preparing for this assignment, uh, um, lets just say ALL SEMESTER UNTIL NOW! Yeah, I know - you'd think I would have learned my lesson by now! And to top it all off, this report is supposed to last 20 MINUTES!! I am dreading it....

I came up with a plethora of different things that I could talk about and none of them every seemed to fit just right. Until today. I was sitting in class stressing about what to have my topic be while having about a MILLION different ideas bounce around in my head all at once when I decided that what I needed to talk about it, I really needed to have a passion for. It needed to be something that I could enjoy talking about and that is something that really is important to me. And thats when I thought of Emily. 

(she is this happy after getting soaked in a rainstorm)

Emily is my younger sister. She has a Pervasive Developmental Disorder that causes her to learn at a different pace then everyone else. But Emily is the absolute sweetest person I know. A lot of kids her age miss out on the sweet person that she is because they don't take the time to get to know her. But I promise if they did, she would be their favorite person to be around. I feel incredibly blessed to have her as my sister. She has taught me so many things about life by how she is always living life to the fullest without even realizing it. 

Emily wants so bad to be like everybody else. She made it a goal this year to be more outgoing and to make new friends. And she has done such a great job! She has learned that there is no point in being shy and she loves to live in the moment. She dreams of getting her license, kissing a boy, going to college, and getting married in the Orlando Temple and having her reception at Disney World. She is so passionate about the things she loves. You would never guess it, but she absolutely loves history and studying about the United States. She wants people to see her as a crazy, fun girl and loves to be told that she is. She can't wait to go to Prom and she loves experiencing everything there is to experience about High School. Oh and she LOVES to dance! I can't forget that! 

Emily may or may not accomplish these things, but my parents have never shut down any of her dreams. They let her dream big. And dream big she does! She has outsmarted the doctors that diagnosed her when she was little on a number of things. She can read and they thought she would never be able to. She is capable of so many things.

But this leads me back to my Oral Report. Emily has been my inspiration for the topic of my report. I am going to speak on mainstreaming special needs and disabled children into regular, every day classrooms and the benefits that those special needs students gain from being mainstreamed and the benefits that regular students gain fro interacting with those disabled students. I have been so blessed to have Emily as my sister and she has taught me so much about people that struggle with handicaps. I believe that if people were more exposed to those with disabilities, they would have a greater appreciation for one another's similarities and differences and come to understand that disabilities are a matter of perception and may be more of a social phenomenon than a medical one. 

If any of you know Emily, I encourage you to get to know her better. She will add so much dimension and life to your life and truly influence you for good. And if you don't know Emily, but know someone like her, take the time to get to know them. They are some of the choicest spirits of our Heavenly Father's. I love her and I hope someday she has the opportunity to bless your life too. 

Now, back to my Research. :D