Senior intros are an influential and irreplaceable part of the Saint Paul Academy senior speech experience. There have been a variety of speech introductions throughout the course of the year from funny intros to serious intros.

The speeches were off to a rough start at the beginning of the year because of frequent “roasts” and other negative comments that occurred during the speeches. Fortunately the senior class of 2018 will be allowed to perform senior speeches, as the intros took a positive turn. That problem was rectified by having the senior class leadership council create guidelines for the intros and led to nice introductions that actually introduced the speaker.

It is unlikely that all of the speakers are known by everyone in the audience, so these introductions are helpful. In some cases the speech intro is a perfect transition to the speaker and show the connection between a speaker and their topic.

Introductions help the speaker become more comfortable on the stage and allow the audience to get to know a little bit about the speaker before they come up for their speech.

The current juniors and the rest of the community should thank the class of 2017 for upholding the tradition of the speech intros. Let us hope that the class of 2018 can continue to uphold and honor the tradition.