February 13, 2020
How Freddie Mercury and Queen -- the '70s rock band and the 2019 film -- inspired a Fenwick senior from Park Ridge to orate on the topic of optimism and reality.
As a junior last school year, Eva Szeszko became the Illinois State Champion, representing the Optimist Club of Oak Park.
“Is there a fine line between optimism and reality?” asked Eva Szeszko, then a junior at Fenwick. “The band Queen took the world by storm during its reign in the 1970s. They introduced the world to a new type of rock and produced hit songs that are still celebrated and sung today. Of these songs, “Bohemian Rhapsody” is perhaps the most well-known. The six-minute song is an unlikely source of optimism, but upon listening to the mere first verse, I was struck with the lyrics’ undiscovered potential. In these lyrics, I found the metaphorical line between optimism and reality.”
READ EVA'S FIRST-PLACE SPEECH