Amélie, 17, took part in the Rencontres Michel-Serres eloquence competition

The Michel-Serres Philosophical Meetings were held from November 8 to 11 in Agen. An event in which a Livradaise high school student took part. Amélie Rudelle, in this case. At 17, the teenager attended the general final year at the Étienne-Restat high school and wanted to study law.

Very involved in the life of the establishment, Amélie is a class delegate, elected to the regional council of public agricultural education delegates. She also has “a real talent as a speaker,” according to her teachers. A talent that was discovered by the 600 spectators at the Agen theater, who came to encourage the 10 candidates in the eloquence competition, organized by the Du Lot-et-Garonne aux grandes écoles association, Friday November 8. This public speaking competition opened the 2024 edition of the Agenais event.

Not his first competition

“Three weeks before, I learned of the sentence on which I had to argue. At that moment, I told myself that I would never succeed,” says Amélie. “This phrase – ''To change the world, we change'' – seemed to me to be such a vast subject…” After many hours of work to construct his text, “but also to repeat it, until we found the right tone, and even to the point of replacing a comma”, she gave the best of herself, to try to convince the jury.

“This is not the first competition I have participated in. At school, we already went to Strasbourg after winning a European competition in history and geography. And then, this is my second participation in this Agen meeting. I want to prove to adults that young people know how to express themselves, that we have very clear ideas and that we must stop putting ourselves in boxes,” emphasized the high school student, upon returning from her participation.

At the end of a speech where she indicated “that to change the world, you have to change yourself, without forgetting who you are or your memories”, Amélie did not finish on the podium. “But what is certain is that she is the favorite of the Étienne-Restat high school,” declared her Livradais teachers.