Name: The Power of Words | Taylor Bertolini | TEDxNSU
Uploaded: 2025-06-07T10:15:57.000Z
Duration: 8 min 12 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Past continuous

So, when I was going to high school, I watched every themed movie possible.

Past simple

I watched things like Grease, The Breakfast Club, High School Musical.

Modal verbs - A2

I thought that going into high school I could dance on the cafeteria tables and go to detention with a bunch of misfits.

I'll lead into the story by also saying that when I was going into high school, none of the kids that I had grown up with in elementary school and middle school went to the same school that I went to.

So, the first day of school, I decided that it was a smart idea to sit in the bathroom and eat my lunch by myself.

I also spent the whole day texting my mom.

And when I say the entire day, I texted her when I was going to the bathroom, when I was going to class, when I was leaving school.

I just didn't want to seem like the girl who sat in the back of the room and had nobody to talk to.

I just wanted to seem like I had friends.

So, days, weeks, months went by and I began to become friends and acquaintances with people.

I began to develop connections with them.

They didn't really have much substance to them.

So, with this feeling of being alone, I kind of developed a fight or flight instinct.

I would be in the cafeteria with hundreds of other students and I would find myself just wanting to run away.

And I don't really know why I had that feeling.

I just felt like I didn't have anybody to turn to and where was I going to go?

When before all of this, before high school, I could dance at a dance recital in front of hundreds of people, even sometimes thousands of them.

But now I found myself extremely, extremely nervous.

And with this feeling of being nervous, I began to develop this feeling of worthlessness.

I felt like I didn't really matter to anyone.

With the feeling of nervous, alone, hopeless, I began to feel worthless and it just kept consuming me.

Now, when you call yourself ugly a lot, multiple times, you're going to start to believe yourself.

So, if your brain decides to tell you that you're alone, you have no friends and you don't matter, over time you're going to believe that.

So, I had myself convinced that I just didn't really matter anymore.

Going into winter break that December, I had a full-on meltdown when my mom asked me how I was doing.

I screamed, I cried, I'm pretty sure I even pushed the dining room table, when I have a very sweet and kind disposition, I promise.

So, my mom made a vow to me that we would move our house so I could go to school with the kids I had grown up with, a better learning environment, and I thought that that would solve my problem.

I didn't know what these feelings were I was experiencing.

I could give them a name, depression and anxiety, but giving them a name didn't really do anything for me, because when I started school that next January, our classes had changed, and I decided it was a smart idea to sit myself in the back of the classroom, because nobody misses the girl that sits in the back of the room.

I started to say goodbye and not see you later, until this one day, when this blonde-haired guy walked right in the room and started reading his schedule out loud.

Now, I mentioned our classes had changed that January, so he was reading his schedule out loud, and I realized, wow, I have three out of the same four classes with this guy, so I muttered that quietly under my breath, and somehow this guy heard me.

With this huge smile, he walked right up to me, right in the back of the room, gave me a really big high five and said, I'm going to see you later.

He found me in every single one of my classes.

He got to know me, he knew my name, he knew stuff about me, and he began to become a really sincere friend, and that's all that it took.

All it took was his kind word and his smile to make me feel like I wasn't by myself anymore.

I eventually told him a few years later what his kind gesture meant to me, and he was awestruck.

He had no idea that his genuine personality mattered to me.

So leaving that story, going into something a little bit lighter, my mom.

She leaves notes everywhere, and when I say everywhere, I literally mean everywhere.

She goes on trips sometimes for work, and she decided to leave notes in the bathroom.

They were really cute, as you can tell, but then I kept finding them there.

Then she decided to leave notes in my shower.

Yeah, it was a little weird at first, but now I'm used to it.

But then, bathroom, shower, next came the pantry where we keep our cups, and in my vanity so when I was getting ready for class in the morning, I would have a note from her.

She would script her love to me on a simple piece of paper.

Now I will admit there was one time that did get me in trouble.

She went on a work trip and told me to do my laundry before she left, and I said that I did it.

An hour before she was set to come home, I decided to finally do my laundry.

So I opened up the washer, and right inside was a note.

That one kind of got me in a little bit of trouble, but at least I did my laundry, right?

So with those notes and that kind smile, it showed me compassion, empathy, how to care for other people, and with those qualities, I have them with me today.

And with that, I have a great, a big love for love letters.

Now they might seem really simple, but I'll explain.

There's this amazing organization called More Love Letters.

They're a global organization that uses the power of social media to give notes and letters to people who really need them.

Now they have a little sister version, kind of like a little affiliate.

It's called Campus Cursive, and I've had the great pleasure of starting my very own chapter here at NOVA.

Now we're the first chapter in the state of Florida, and there are 80 other chapters worldwide.

We do these things called love letter bundles.

We write 15 to 30 letters to somebody who was nominated by a friend, faculty, or staff member.

Now this bundle in specific was very special to me, because this girl reached back out to us and let us know that when she was receiving this bundle of letters, she had escaped from an abusive relationship to Florida.

She was told that her track career was over because she had an injury that could not be  She felt alone, and then there was a knock at her door, and she opened it and saw a bundle of letters laying on the floor, and I'm sure she might have been a little bit confused.

But then she read through those letters and realized that there were complete strangers who cared about her.

She shared with us that that was the first time in forever that she didn't feel alone.

Now we do more than just love letter bundles.

We leave notes on a take what you need board.

You leave something behind that somebody else might need, and they go ahead and take it.

We host events about empowerment, love, kindness.

We just want everybody to know that they are never truly alone because we are standing right there with them.

And all it is is a simple piece of paper with words on them.

Now, it smiles with kindness, with notes and love.

I know for a fact that you can do the same thing for someone else.

All you have to do is take a step out of your own box and think about someone else.

How your words can truly affect someone else.