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My experience with stuttering For some context I started speech therapy when I was 3 because I wasn't speaking but just making random noises, from that point all the way up to 4th grade I would be taken out of class for speech, sometimes it was by myself sometimes with others. In 4th grade I started going less and less until it stopped. Then 5th grade hit, I still had (and do) trouble pronouncing words but I could be understood for the most part. Then covid hit. I begun having trouble letting a single word out, and when I did most people couldn't understand me. Once in 6th grade someone came in class crying so I tried to ask him if he was okay, all I said was "Are you okay." And no one could understand me. I could spend minutes trying to get one word out. It got so bad that I started to make random noises and point at things to communicate. I am also a social person and love to talk but now I couldn't and the friend group I was in got split up because of covid, so I had to make new friends. But I couldn't because I couldn't speak. Before all of this I was a straight A student, stuttering and covid ruined my middle school experience. Luckily in 7th grade I finally got put back into speech therapy and my stutter could be formerly addressed. A few months later I worked up the corage to ask somone who I knew in class if I could hang out with her and her freinds and she said yes. During my speech therapy I've also learned ways to stop and start over if I start stutter and breathing exercises to help get get pass words when stuck. At the end of 8th grade I graduated from speech. And high school was a new start, so I got my stuff together and with my stutter much more under control I could focus on school starting my freshmen year. Now it's the end of 9th grade and I am sitting with a 4.0 GPA when I had barely had a 1.0 GPA in middle school. I'm glad that when I do stutter my freinds will wait for me to finish, it is honestly amazing.