Speech

Final Paper – Speech

During my time spent in Speech class, I can’t help but realize just how much time I enjoyed in that class, and how much better and more confident a speaker I am now. At the beginning of class I was just another person who wanted no business getting up to make speeches desiring almost no attention what so ever. Now, I can confidently and comfortably give a clear, concise speech (for the most part) and actually enjoy myself as I’m doing it.

During my tenor with speech I never thought I would actually enjoy class and be excited for giving speeches. As I took the podium for my first speech (a group speech) I really wasn’t sure how well I would fair. So it was pretty nerve racking at first. Luckily two people in my group went before me and knowing they were probably nervous too helped calm the butterflies fluttering in my stomach. Nonetheless I was still pretty nervous. I’m pretty sure in the beginning I made a lot of awkward stutters and pauses but still held myself together and got myself through the presentation in a timely manner. After the completion of the first speech I know I had a lot to work on. I needed to fix the following; wasted awkward movements with my hands and body, make better eye contact with the audience, and learn my info a little better that way I don’t ever have to pause or look at the PowerPoint for recollection. The second speech came around and I selected to be the very first one. I had gotten to know my classmates better and thought I had this speech thing down. But by the time I had to go back up on that podium for another speech, my heart started beating extra fast, right on queue. The second time around I was better, but not by much. It wasn’t pretty apparent from Miss Erica’s evaluation and from the students that my eye contact was still pretty bad, and I was still relying on looking at my PowerPoint for direction way too often. So I was a little disappointed