1st draft Struggling with a speech Impediment

I was born about a month premature. I was diagnosed with a speech impediment which in my case I had a hard time saying certain words, letters, making sentences and I would stutter or mumble when I tried to talk to anyone.
I started speech therapy at the age of three since that was when people noticed I had a speech impediment. I’ll always remember how it was in school. When I started school I had to be taken out of classes about three times a week for therapy, there weren’t that many other students who were pulled out of class. I hated this since I was always made fun of for having special classes. I remember time when I was in middle school and the speech therapist came to the classroom door to get me since she was new and everyone started whispering and laughing at me until I left the class.
I was always self conscious of my speech and became very shy and quiet. This made it difficult to have many friends since while in school and in daycare I didn’t talk at all most of the time I still don’t talk that much except around people I know since I always thinks I’m being judged based upon the way I talk. I never liked and still don’t like speaking aloud in class. It stinks when I’m in classes and I know something but just can’t get myself to raise my hand or just say what I want to.
Once I started middle school having a speech impediment affected me the most since the other kids in my classes would make fun of me and thought it was fun. I always went home hating school since out of school I could be myself and not have to worry about being made fun of. I was always called retard and stupid. Being called retard hurt me the most because I never understood why people could just call others names like that. After 7th grade I was starting to get sick of being made fun of and leaving classes for speech therapy so finally I asked if I had to go anymore. My speech therapist said that I have had all the help they could give me so I finally I was happy not having speech therapy. I still have problems with speech and socializing with people but I have some amazing friends now and a lot of people there for me now.
Having a speech impediment has made me see the world differently and has made me different from other people since I don’t go around making fun of everyone since I know everyone is different. This is my personal essay about struggling with speech.

process for personal essay

The process i have gone through for the personal essay is talking to some of my family , and remembering what happened that day. what are some other ways i could do to gather more information to help with my personal essay?