By Juliana Pearson (January 22, 2002)

Let’s face it, no matter how routine oral presentations may have become by the time senior year rolls around, they are rarely easy. In front of the class hands sometimes quiver involuntarily, cheeks flush red, words carelessly trip over tongues. The speaker often races through the notes or outline in front of them, waiting for it to be over. When it is, nearly every student breathes a sigh of relief.

Certainly, waves of relief washed over many members of Dr. DeFazio’s first block English class after Robert Frost presentations were over. For nearly two weeks, students presented twelve to fifteen minute explications of particular Frost poems. I’d gotten really involved in the issues and themes presented by my poem, "The Lone Striker". To make my presentation more interesting, I decided that I would personify the poem by dressing up as (what else?) a lone striker. Surely, that would bring about a little levity. 

But there was little reaction as I stood in front of the class in a newsboy cap and my father’s old painting pants and plaid shirt. The audience’s faces were not alive with amusement. I saw only what I should have expected to see: the vacant stares of nearly second-semester seniors about to listen to the fifteenth Frost presentation in a row. I wondered how my teachers got up and did it every day.

To make a long story short, the presentation went fine. I made my points. I sat down. Then, I was pleasantly surprised when a fellow student leaned over and told me how much he had enjoyed my presentation. I smiled and thanked him. My classmate didn’t know he had made my day.

A few kind words can certainly go a long way. A couple of weeks before my English presentation, I had happened to read "Dear Abby." That day (December 27^th) she had reprinted a letter sent to her by a junior high school math teacher in St. Paul, Minnesota. Her math students had been working on a new concept all week and were stressed out. "They were frowning and carping at each other and me," the teacher wrote. She wanted to alleviate the tension in the room, so she asked each student to write down "the nicest thing they could say about each of their classmates." That evening the teacher went home and compiled what the students had written about each individual. The next day, she presented each student with his or her list of compliments. "Before long, everyone was smiling," she remembered.

The assignment wasn’t mentioned in class again, but years later the teacher was asked to attend the funeral of one of her former students who had been killed in Vietnam. After the service, the man’s father presented the teacher with the student’s list of compliments. He had been carrying it when he died. Soon, the teacher discovered that many of his classmates had also kept the lists. One had put it in a diary, another in a wedding album. A third carried it with him all the time.

There is little question what the letter demonstrates about the power of compliments. Genuine compliments are precious spiritual gems. They are very valuable, very appreciated and unfortunately, often very rare. They have a lot of power to brighten our worlds.

So here’s my request for the second semester: let’s make the GM community a little brighter. There are a lot of people here doing amazing and wonderful things that don’t make the morning announcements. Let’s make it our New Year’s resolution not to gripe about our peer’s faults. Instead, we should make an effort to notice everyone’s positive attributes, and then take the time to let him or her know we noticed. If we do, I’ll bet everyone will be a little happier. My challenge may sound a bit idealistic, but hey, when did that become a negative term?