Reaction to own essays and grafs

                At the first, I was dreading the idea of having to take this course.  It’s not that I despise English; it is the fact that I did not think that I could be creative enough to consistently come up with ideas to write about.  I really wanted to just ignore the fact that I had to take an English class but, graduation requirements wouldn’t let me.  I was locked in, stuck, unable to do anything but take the dreaded English 101!

                Class finally started and I settled in behind the flickering screen to attempt my first writing graf.  To my surprise, my fingers started to work and the words started to flow across the screen.  “Wow,” I thought.  I may actually be able to do this.  I may actually be able to write well enough to get a decent grade.  After posting my first graf to my blog, I patiently wait for the instructor to respond.  What will he think?  What will he say? 

                The results were in and I actually did a decent job with my first paper.   It seemed that I was on the way to doing alright.  Papers were assigned and papers were turned in; all seeming to have a positive response from the mysterious person on the other end of the internet.  I was proud of myself for finally taking the challenge and facing my fears.  As the essays and grafs were posted, I increasingly became prouder and prouder of myself with the results.  Maybe English 101 wasn’t as bad as I expected.

                I was a little disappointed in myself half way through the semester when I started to get behind in writing and having a horrible case of writers block.  It seemed as if I would never be able to concentrate on doing essays and grafs with all that was going on in my life at the time.  I had an even harder time coming up with a subject for my Isearch.  I felt like I was going to drown in homework with no hope of ever getting caught up.  I had no reason to fear though; with a little guidance and reassurance, I was able to get caught up and even produce (what I think was) a pretty good Isearch.

                In the end, I can say that I am proud of myself for the work that I was able to accomplish during English 101.  I ended up believing in my own skills and in what can happen when you are determined to finish something.  Looking them all over, I can admit that there was some weak papers with not a whole lot of oompf to them but, I feel that there were some equally impressive papers as well.  I enjoyed taking English 101 and realized that writing is not as bad as I thought it would be.  Bring on the final essay!

Process Essay

          Most of us have been there at one point in our lives; most likely happening early on in some English class at school.  The night before is spent rehearsing exactly what you want to say while lying awake for a long and sleepless night.  As the time comes near, you can feel your heart start to race, the room seems to get uncomfortably hot and the feeling of being sick lurks in the pits of your stomach.  The teacher finally calls your name and as you walk slowly to the front of the room, you start to sweat uncontrollably; a bugler can be heard playing “Taps” in the far distance.  It is now time for you to deliver that dreaded public speech, how will you ever survive?  I was once that guy, the one who would magically end up sick on days like this.  It wasn’t until I reenlisted for a second tour in the United States Marine Corps that I would learn the tricks to overcoming glossophobia. 

I was off to Marine Corps Recruiters School for seven long weeks of learning all there was about the Marine Corps, how to “sell” it, and even how to speak in front of large crowds.  I soon found out that it really isn’t that bad and came up with a few ways to beat this crazy fear.   My favorite technique was to pick two or three visual points in the room to focus on during the speech.  These points would usually be spots on walls, empty desks or other significant structures that were spread across the room.  I found these areas great for concentrating on instead of the crowd.  It kept me from actually having to make eye contact with anyone in the audience but, gave the illusion that I was.  The points were spread out to make it seem like I was “working the crowd with my eyes.”    For some reason, this worked great to reduce stage fright.  These points helped me to make the crowd disappear; a lot better than the old technique of picturing everyone in their underwear!

Even though impromptu speeches are a valuable tool to have, I do not like them.  My second point would be to always do the work and research on the subject that you are speaking about.  To me, every good presentation ends with a question and answer period. I was always prepared for that one person to believe they were smarter than me.  Not giving them the opportunity to prove that they are is always a good idea!   Having a thorough knowledge of what I talking about also made me feel more comfortable on the podium; being at ease on the podium made me feel like the speech was smoother and structured to a point without being over structured.

“Over structured” you ask?  Yup, I feel that it is very possible; I will explain.  I would always structure my note cards in bullet format and not written out verbatim to keep the speech simple.   Don’t get me wrong, I would still rehearse my talking points before to get an idea of what I wanted to say; just not verbatim.  I found that reading a speech verbatim makes you sound like a monotone robot and keeps your face buried in a paper; effectively putting the audience to sleep.  Bullet format helps prevent you from doing this exact thing, building a more dynamic presentation.  The second reason for using bullets is simple.  I found that if I tried to read a speech verbatim, everything would go great until I stumbled on a punctuation error or some other sort of distraction; never able to fully recover from the slip up and making myself look like a fool.  Bullets helped me to keep from getting distracted after a mistake since they allowed me to have more room to adjust what I saying and recover.

There are many tricks out there that people can teach you to get over the fear of public speaking.  I found that the best way was to actually get on stage and go for it.  With almost everything in life; practice makes perfect.  Practice makes things seem a little less frightening and proves that you will not die of embarrassment if you make a mistake.  So, find some focal points, know something about what you are talking about and use bulleted notes; these are my nuggets of wisdom on public speaking.  If all else fails, remember that there are more people in the audience that would never dare to get up there themselves.