Public speaking

Last year I conducted an interview for one of my classes. One of my questions was asking what advice to give to anyone entering her field of work and she immediately answered that everyone should take a public speaking course. Most areas of work can benefit from learning how to speak in public and what it can do for self-esteem and confidence.

I'm taking a public speaking class as part of my program. It's required but after hearing the logic in that interview, I think it's something I might have done anyway because I feel that, as great as I can be at a lot of things (toot toot [that's my own horn, by the way] ), public speaking is one weakness that I can't seem to shake off.

I picture myself giving these extravagant speeches that involve an incredible visual, me moving my arms appropriately and ending with an erupting applause but when I get in front of a small-to-large crowd, I lose all hope of that. I do feel like I am fine with saying what needs to be said but my biggest weakness is "um".

This week, I gave my first assigned speech in the class. The speech itself was only to be between one and two minutes long and was meant to be an introduction to the class. The topic of the speech - me. We had to come up with a few main points about ourselves, including minimum criteria consisting of life plans, a quote to live by and things we liked.

Normally, I love to talk about myself...but only in written form. Take this blog, for example. It's all from my perspective, obviously, although I don't write about myself *that* much as I don't think it's interesting as a reader but I can definitely be self-indulgent when the opportunity presents itself. One of my dreams is to publish a book of short stories about me - non-fiction. I've been gathering them as I remember them. My main obstacle is that I don't know anything about publishing a book and there's no actual audience for such a book written by someone like me (yet).

When it comes to talking about myself orally, I don't really like it. I don't like the idea of monopolizing someone's time by talking about myself. I've never been one to divulge information about myself for the sake of telling something unless I've been asked or it's such a funny story I have to tell someone. I don't like bragging and I don't like complaining (on actual serious things - I do like to complain for the sake of complaining on small insignificant minuscule matters). So when I had to come up with things to talk about for one and a half minutes, I was stuck.

On one hand, I could tell a story or go into detail about a few specific things but the time limit was short and there were criteria that had to be met as far as content was concerned. So no room for details. I figured I would start with where I was from, when I moved to Halifax, why I moved here and the schools I attended. After that, I had to figure out specific things that made me "want to get out of bed in the morning." I like writing, reading, traveling. Those were a few of the things I listed with no detail. What are my life goals and where do I see myself in ten years? I gave an answer but I didn't answer the question because I still don't know. What lessons do I live by? I stumbled over this answer even though I knew what I wanted to say, I didn't know how to say it. Fairness and perspective. Life isn't fair but I personally make it my mission to try to be as fair as I can no matter the situation, and I believe everyone should be willing to learn perspective and see things from other people's points of view.

So this blog has ended up being a story about myself and why I don't like to talk about myself. If my book idea doesn't pan out, I'll just write my first-hand experiences in this blog in hopes my readers will find them entertaining. But as of now, I am saving them in case something happens that allows me to develop an audience to read my stories in published form.