Senior speech

My high school did not do a traditional graduation ceremony. We had three commencement speakers instead of one, and I was chose out of a class of over four hundred to be one of them.
Speaking in front of audiences is what I do best. Nothing thrills me more than making a crowd of people rise and fall with my words, laugh or cry depending on my diction and voice. But speaking at commencement is a challenge that I’m not sure if I can handle: over 5 thousand people, including my peers, their parents, my teachers, my mentors, not to mention the Board of Education for my city. Could I really do this? Play on the emotions of over five thousand people?
I made one crucial decision that made that answer a yes.
I was myself. I didn’t use famous quotes from celebrities long since dead, or speak with a solemn superiority, using big words that I didn’t understand to make myself look smarter. I spoke as I would speak. Because, however this was something that my classmates and I would remember for years to come, I wanted to add some sort of inspiration for the future.
I didn’t begin my speech with a quote from Bernard Shaw or Rocky Balboa like the other two speakers. I used a line filled with my usual sarcastic self-deprecation: “Senior year. When the school year was about commence, I told myself “Carrie, this year, you’re gonna be cool.”
I used the slang term “gonna” to appeal to my classmates personally, because that is how we speak together. This speech was, after all, for them. I continued, “You’ll wave at people, and they’ll notice. No longer will people ask what your name is after going to school with you for ten years. And somehow when you get invited to a party, no longer will Mike Koester ask you, “’how did you get invited?’” I used language as we use it, to do something completely different from the others. But I did not forget the fact that my speech was being addressed to five thousand people, including a prestigious Board of Education. A line that I’m particularly proud of, one that touched me, was, “…the point is to take that strength of character we have gotten here (high school) and use it to carry ourselves over obstacles in the future.” This language was meant to sound inspirational. A touch more of formality made it appear eloquent and motivational. I changed my normal word choice and fluidity of speech to address a more serious section of my speech and to impress on my audience the importance of the tasks lying ahead of us.
My use of both formal and informal language in this piece of writing shows the diversity as well as the similarity in my changes between speech patterns. While my everyday language includes slang and rather sarcastic tones, I was able to morph them into formal speech with a more sophisticated rhythm and tone of speaking and word choice.