Jeannette Walls

Jeannette Walls, author of The Glass Castle spoke some inspiring words today. A lot of students who were attending her speech only went because they had to or they needed the extra credit, but most walked out actually happy they went. When your teacher tells you have to go watch a speaker most people instantly assume it will be boring and just a waste of time, but from the second Jeannette was on stage she kept it interesting.

Although The Glass Castle is a nonfiction book some of the stories Walls tells in it are very hard to believe. Walls came on stage thought and recollected on some of the stories from the book and you could tell that was the life she lived. Walls stated that she had wrote the book with one goal at first, for the "rich" kid ("meaning the kid whose parents payed their bills on time") to pick up that book and for it to change their life. For them to not look at the "poor" kid the way they used to. Then she went on to tell us she had met a girl (who was on vacation with her parents in the Caribbean) who told her that after reading The Glass Castle she was not going to pick on the kids she used to in school anymore. After Jeannette had accomplished that goal she made another one, for the "poor" kid to read her book and to gain some hope their future like she did from reading her favorite book.

I think everyone who attended her speech today got something different than they expected. I heard some very inspiring words today and I am sure many other students did too. Walls told a story about how she used to believe to feel good about yourself you just had to put someone else down, but that quickly changed when she tried to do so and failed. Hearing this made me think about how we judge people today, people we don't even know, without thinking about how it is going to make them feel. This book truly did inspire me to not be so judgmental about people, and for any student that just skipped reading the book but went to the speech today, I'm sure they are now inspired too.