My First Experience with Public Speaking

I feel over all my speech went well. For starters, I feel I did thorough and investigative research. I checked my sources to be sure all of them where trust worthy. While researching, it was frustrating to find so many sources that where not trust worthy, especially if they had information that would boost my speech. When it came to how I used the sources, I feel I used them in the most appropriate way. This was a more challenging topic to research because all of the data keep on this treatment was through personal descriptions that varied greatly.

Therefore, I chose to have many quotes in my speech. I took quotes from both sides of the spectrum in attempt to give my audience the best understanding of how the patients where affected by the cure. Secondly, I tried not to draw to many conclusions for my audience, as this was a informative speech and not persuasive. I found that for me, that was a difficult line to leave uncrossed as I believe this technology failed partly because of its sexism, therefore, I felt I had to partially convince the audience it was sexist.

Other things my classmates thought I did well on were my visual aid, professional dress, and holding their interest. When creating my visual aid, I was not sure what to put on in at first. I could not find pictures of the actual rest cure in any of the scholarly journals, so I added photos that helped give my audience a better understanding of civil war surgery and who Mitchell was. I also used my visual aid to help my audience digest the quotes I used better. Since they were such a large part of my speech, I did not want them to go in one ear and out the other. I understand things better by hearing them and reading them, so I attempted to help my audience by placing the quotes on the visual aid. I also received compliments on my professional dress. Some classmate said it was professional, but still showed a sense of personal style. I feel that is important in a professional environment, because it makes you stick out in a good way, not so cookie cutter. I attempted the business casual by wearing kakis and a blush blazer with tan heals and a professional statement necklace. I did receive one negative comment regarding my ear piercings being distracting, so I will take that into consideration during my next speech. Lastly, I was told I did a good job of keeping my audience’s attention. I feel I can partially credit this to the topic itself, I found it very interesting and chose it in hopes that it would appeal to my audience as well. I think my visual aid helped keep attention as I did not stay on one slide too long.

Alas, like every learning experience everything was not positive. My classmates made to reoccurring problems I will address here, nervousness and looking at my flash cards to often. It was very unfortunate because I felt the presentation, I gave in class was one of my worst compared to my practice runs the morning of or the night before. I must note before I was doing this on my own or in front of close peers. I think I got in front of the class and slightly froze. This led to a few stumbles and running back on my material. I think this also led to me relying on my flash cards to often. It wasn’t that I did not know my material. I was that I was scared to forget something in my nervous haste. Throughout my nervousness I can at least boast I kept my head enough to manage my time just right, as I was worried about the time requirement.

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