Okay. So I want to brag on my students a little bit.

On Monday, I judged the ZJUT Zhijiang College English Speech Competition. As I rolled up to the auditorium, I didn’t really know what to expect. How many speeches was I going to hear? Who was giving them? What were these alleged speeches even about? Was anyone even going to show up for an English speech competition? I had nooooo idea.

I arrived to a packed house, with students filling all the seats, the aisles, and lining the walls along the sides and rear of the auditorium. Wow. Intense.
Turns out there were 31 speeches for the first round of the competition. Yes, just for the first round. These were to be given by students from all majors and all grade levels. And they were all going to be discussing the same general topic, that topic being “Why China is Awesome.” For each speaker, the judges (that’s me!) scored the speech according to fluency, pronunciation, presence, and all that jazz. The top 10 scoring speakers moved on to an extemporaneous speaking final round. The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners were to be determined by averaging each speaker’s scores from both rounds.

So, I have to admit. The first round wasn’t super thrilling. One can only listen to the same speech about how “the most beautiful sentence in the world is ‘I love you, China’” so many times.

But, the final round was very exciting. Even more so for me, because five of my freshmen students made it into the final 10! Fivvvve of my freshmen, who were competing against seniors! I was so proud (And noooo, it wasn’t because I was inflating my students’ scores—I was only one out of five judges. It’s just that my students are that awesome). One of my students even became the crowd favorite for her hilarious extemporaneous speech on the topic of “loneliness.” Her speech went something like this:

“When I got this topic, I have to admit I was very confused, because loneliness is seeming to me like a sad thing, which I don’t understand, because I am always so very happy! Am I right!? Am I right!? (at this point, the crowd goes “Yeah! You’re right!”) So, I don’t know what loneliness is, but I have advice for anyone who is lonely. If you are a boy, you should go talk to pretty girls, like our foreign teachers, Candle and Wendy (Wendy and I are simultaneously blushing and dying with laughter). And if you are a girl, you should go shopping! You don’t have money? I will give you money!”

Needless to say, the crowd loved it. She ended up being one of two third place winners! But my pride does not end there: two of my other students (pictured here) won the two second place prizes! So, so proud of my little chickadees that night!