I’ve recently come across some interesting news about a sophomore and close friend by the name of Benjamin Sevilla. Sevilla recently shared with me that he has a speech impediment. I decided to ask Sevilla some questions about the way he copes with this. The first question I asked was, “Do you generally enjoy school?” Sevilla stated, “Yeah my teachers and friends are cool.” After that, I thought it was a good enough start to ask how he felt about his communication difficulties. He answered, “It sucks. Sometimes I read out loud and feel dumb.” It’s clear to see that Sevilla doesn’t enjoy having difficulties speaking but he still maintains a positive attitude.

That led me to ask why he has such a positive attitude. He stated, “I just always have a positive outlook on life because of my speech impediment.” This lets us know that he won’t be taken down by a speech impediment and will keep going forward in life. I asked next if he’s taken classes to help with his speech impediment and he responded with, “Yeah I used to take classes when I was little, like in third grade, but I moved, and since the fourth-grade year and up I haven’t taken any.”

I asked next if he gets support by his family or friends, he answered, “Yeah I do, both help a lot actually. And if I don’t get support and people joke around about my speech impediment I don’t get offended because I look past it.” Sevilla is really brave for not letting people get to his head and hurt him. He knows that it’s a part of his life and if you don’t choose to look past that and see the good person he is, you’re definitely not helping him nor are you helping yourself.

My last and final question to Sevilla was, “Does your speech impediment just generally make school difficult?” He responded with, “To be honest, no it doesn’t. I try hard to read and do my best”. Personally, I can confirm this and anyone who knows Sevilla personally can too, he has accomplished a lot of words people with no speech impediment have a difficult time pronouncing like “parallelogram.” I was amazed at how fast it took for him to pronounce this word.  All in all, this goes to show that Sevilla won’t let difficulties in life get him down and will continue to look and move forward, and that’s exactly what a great person like that would say.