After defining myself largely by being an active member of Speech Team for four years of high school, having graduated and left behind the whirlwind of invitationals that starts every November means that I’m constantly reminding myself that I should be working on writing my speech for the season … and then remembering that I’m in college. The retirement of my black pencil skirt and suit jacket to the back of the closet is still one of the saddest moments of my life, as was the realization that I will probably never again have a valid reason for walking to the middle of a room and nodding emphatically before launching into an impassioned eight-and-a-half minute monologue. Loosely based off of the five stages of grief, here are the three stages of Speech Team withdrawal.

1. Denial

It’s possible that on a Friday night a few weeks ago I dutifully set my alarm to five a.m. and made sure I had stocked up on tights with no runs in them, only to wake up Saturday morning and stare at the ceiling stubbornly as I tried not to acknowledge the fact that a yellow school bus was not waiting to take me to a high school half an hour away. I did my speech makeup (tons of blush, check), curled my hair and ate a green apple for breakfast to help with enunciation. Did I feel a little silly? Maybe. (Did I actually do any of these things? No.)

But continually denying the end of Speech was a very real thing for me and many of my fellow graduated Speechies –– how do you cope with the fact that you actually have Saturdays to yourself? Or walk past a little black binder without wanting to pick it up and launch into a reading of Tina Fey’s Bossypants (even though that wasn’t even your piece)? How do you fight the urge to spend hours of your life poring over SpeechWire or thinking of topics that would make for a good SOS? I wasn’t entirely sure.

2. Anger / Bargaining

What do you mean I didn’t have to write a speech and edit it more than any school paper I’ve ever written? Or memorize facts I’ll never again have a use for, such as the fact that the first-ever voice recognition machine was produced in 1952 by Bell Laboratories? And don’t even get me started on what getting e-mails from the National Speech and Debate Association –– emails that referred to me as an alum –– did to my emotions. I didn’t want to be an alum, I wanted to get up at eight on a Saturday morning and speak to a classroom of six people about the Bystander Effect! Alum made me sound like a retiree with a beer gut and too many cats, and I’m not sure I was prepared to face that when I nodded at my Sectional judge for what I knew was likely the last time.

The anger I speak about in this stage wasn’t necessarily anger directed at Speech, but more so, the fact that Speech was over. We all knew that four years was the cutoff point when we walked into our first Speech Team meeting as bright-eyed freshmen, but who wouldn’t be slightly angry to wake up and realize that the community of fellow Speechies you’ve relied on as a safety net for the majority of your high school career is now, poof, gone? That’s just not fair.

The bargaining involved lots of e-mailing with old coaches, asking questions ranging those regarding which tournaments I could come back and judge for and offering to write the speeches of current members (which isn’t allowed, for some reason). It involved lots of reciting short little speeches to my bathroom mirror and reading over my old speeches, trying to hold on to at least a shred of life before the end of Speech. But eventually, even I had to reach the final stage.

3. Acceptance

Having now accepted the fact that Speech was meant to be a part of my life for only four short years, I’ve also embraced the happy truth that the end of Speech Team doesn’t have to mean the end of all of the amazing things it taught me. I went into Speech as a freshman whose voice couldn’t be heard from the back of the room, and I know that I would not be who I am today if I hadn’t spent four years talking to lockers. Four years on Speech taught me a lot about a version of myself that I didn’t even know existed when I was fourteen: A version that has faith in the ability of words to move people, change perspectives and influence change. Speech is an amazing thing that I am both lucky and grateful to have been a part of. So, despite the fact that I now have to find new uses for my pencil skirt, I know that I wouldn’t trade what I learned on Speech for anything. (Head nod.)