Week 10 blog post

Past experiences of public speaking – the good, the bad, and the awful

The Good

As far as good experiences go with public speaking – I haven’t had any. Hopefully this last assignment will be a good experience for me!

The Bad

My first bad experience with public speaking was in 2016, my first year of university, I had to do a group presentation regarding the dairy industry in New Zealand. For this presentation I had done my research, so I was quite confident. As we all stood up to present our work I had no worries in my mind; I was second to present my part of the assignment. When my turn came I had a sudden realization that I did not know how to change the slides on our PowerPoint file, so I decided to try pushing random buttons until I found the right one- once I found the right button I had passed my slide; out of frustration I accidentally swore in front of everyone! Once I realized that I swore, I said Sh*t and swore again *hahaha*. I had no choice but to continue my speech as if nothing happened, with all said and done, I ended up doing quite well and achieving highly, thankfully!

The Awful

I remember one time in high school, my two best friends and I were doing a speech in assembly, I can’t remember what it was about, but I do remember when it came to do my part of the speech. I looked into my friend’s eyes just as she finished and it was my turn to begin. She gave me a cheeky smile and I couldn’t keep it together, I started to giggle as if my muscles were having a seizure and I tried to speak in between laughs but I even couldn’t understand what I was saying, as if I had a frog in the back of my mouth. In the end, I burst out in a hearty island laugh and then all of us were laughing, we never finished the speech, my teacher wasn’t impressed and neither was the principal, I’m just glad we did the speech as volunteers and not as an academic criterion.