“One of the greatest things you have received from Portville is your small town strength. There are going to be people from bigger cities that will look down on you from being from a small town; you have to show them that you can and will do things better because you are from a small town.”

My high school French teacher spoke these words to a group of juniors during my senior year of high school, but in actuality, he told these words to my best friend and me, who had snuck into the auditorium to hear his speech.

At one point during his speech, he pointed at the two of us and told the junior high students to look at us. He asked us if we would have gotten anywhere without our small town strength and without asking for help. We smiled and told him, no. I yelled that I wouldn’t have gotten into college without him. My friend nodded her head in agreement. He pointed at me specifically, “I got her into my Alma Mater and she’s going.” He is so thrilled that I am attending Niagara University in the fall and even happier that he got to write the recommendation letters for general admission and for admission into the honors program.

As he finished up his speech, he told these young teenagers that this small town strength will developed them to be ambitious, caring, knowledgeable, dedicated and friendly people. People that he will be proud to know in 20 years, when they are off helping to make the world a better place.

This was one of the best pieces of advice I have ever received from my French teacher and it is most definitely the lesson that is still stuck in my head. I might not be able to correctly translate a sentence in French for you or tell you what the plus que parfait even means. But I can tell you, word for word, the different parts of his speech that day. As a high school senior, getting ready to leave everything I’ve ever known in a few months, I needed it.

I’ve needed it all the nights I couldn’t sleep — when my anxious brain was going around in circles worrying that I won’t fit in at my college, that I won’t make friends. That I will struggle through my first semester and have to transfer to a college that’s only 20 minutes away from home. That I won’t get into law school four years from now and that I’ll never become a lawyer seven years from now. That I will fail at everything I attempt to accomplish.

Then, I hear his words. His reminder that I have a whole town as a support system. I can ask for help if I need it and someone will be able to help me. That support system taught me in my 18 years of life to be an ambitious, caring, knowledgeable, dedicated and friendly person. That I learned to be someone that would make him proud. I needed these words because they make up some of the best advice I have ever received.

I’m telling you these words because I think you might need them. As you leave your small town to go to a city for college or to work, remember these words. I promise they apply to you. You will go out into the world and you will succeed. You will always have that small town strength.