Brainstorming
I will be connecting with my audience through a variety of relatable academic based memes that have to do with the topics I will be talking about. A few early examples of these are procrastination, selection of major/minor, goal setting, organization, accountability, and self-advocacy among other things. Everyone enjoys memes and content to add some lightheartedness and comedic effect to topics that are personal in nature with both presenter and audience. I will also attempt to outline ideas and strategies that have been useful to me as well as some educational “cheats” that have made my college experience easier.
I selected the topic of “becoming a better version of my academic self” because I feel that this is an area that can always be improved upon, especially for me personally but for everyone as well. Education can be hard at times and striving to streamline this process through tricks of the trade and coping mechanisms can significantly lighten the load of this particular time in our lives. The college experience can have good moments and bad moments. It’s all about finding balance and striving to do better at the next opportunity. We can always do things to make life a little easier for ourselves and finding what works and what doesn’t is an important part of that process.
The overall theme of my speech will be “how to achieve your best academic self through balance”. I’m thinking that I will include a variety of memes about each topic as comedic effect or just as a relatable and easily accessible medium of communication. I think balance is something that we all must constantly work on in our academic lives as if we push too hard or take on too much it can all collapse. I will cover topics such as “procrastination, selection of major/minor, goal setting, organization, accountability, self-advocacy, achieving balance, and what that looks like. I’m looking forward to figuring out exactly what form this project will take through drafts.
Speech Outlines
Lone Wolf Speech Draft #1
Lone Wolf Speech Draft #2
Lone Wolf Speech Draft #3
Lone Wolf Speech Video
My Best Advice
The best advice that I gave has to be to focus more on what you are actively saying instead of where you want to your speech to go.
Why It’s My Best Advice
This helps reduce the use of filler words and if you focus more on what you are actively saying most times you can link it to where you want to go easiest than focusing on where you want to go primarily and then losing track of what you are currently saying.
Best Advice From My Peers
The best advice that I received was to take it slow and focus on the points that resonated with my audience group instead of trying to cover as much as I was.
Why This Was Their Best Advice
This was particularly helpful to me as I was still short on meeting the time benchmark and my initial idea was to add more content to my speech but instead my group told me to focus more on what was already there and expand it instead of attempting to add new stuff.
Peer Review Reflection
After rewatching the video of the dry run of my speech I have realized first and foremost that I have to speak way louder than I did as most of the audio is drowned out by the person who presented at the same time I did. Also as I don’t have my speech memorized yet, eye contact was lacking. Overall I know that I need to work on volume and the act of knowing what I want to say better so I can maintain eye contact and avoid filler words. I also noticed something I wasn’t even remotely aware of. When I was giving my speech I ended up grabbing my shorts constantly so I definitely need to either find a way for my hands to contribute in a productive way in my speech or otherwise find a way to keep my hands steady and avoid idle movement. I also might be thinking too much about this but I think that I also might be moving too much in general. I turn quite often from side to side which I never noticed before. Overall I think I need to be more aware of all my movements during my speech and to just move with purpose and the rest will follow.
Reflection of Project as a Whole
I personally felt that I floundered my speech a little bit and here is why. Firstly I more or less improvised my speech because once I got up here and started delivering my speech, my mind went blank. I had my outline in my hands but I couldn’t bring myself to look at it and stop delivering my speech so I just stuck to my slides with my main themes on them and just focused on why I picked those themes and how I felt about my academic habits. Overall I would say that I delivered a pretty ok speech, It just wasn’t really the speech I had prepared if that makes any sense as obviously I planned the speech I delivered but it was also more or less improvised.
Moving on from this, I would say that my nerves definitely got the better of me but I also didn’t let them take over so in that sense I am proud of the speech that I delivered and I’m glad the fact that all my pictures were memes landed pretty well as I was a little worried about the professionalism of having solely memes in a college presentation but I’m thinking that they were appreciated and that they made sense for what I was going for.
In short, I think my speech worked out and it wasn’t easy by any stretch of the imagination but it also wasn’t the end of the world. Speeches are hard, but they aren’t impossible.
