Public Speaking: A Roller Coaster

My most recent in-class public speaking endeavor would have to be the speech we gave in class on our civic artifact papers. For me, I had my content well-memorized, but my timing ended up becoming the main issue as I spoke for far too long. My greatest strength in that speech, I would say, is expressing passion for a topic. I think I do well to utilize strong word choice, which is often very difficult in that context, to convey my thoughts with precision. My greatest weaknesses, in my opinion, would be pacing, posture, and eye contact. I speak far too quickly, primarily as a function of nerves. My posture often becomes very casual past the point of confidence, which can become a detriment to my speaking. And finally my eye contact is often more of a cursory glance rather than sustained and prolonged connection.

More recently than the speech, I presented in a case competition to a small group of 5 judges with a team of 4 and then to a larger group of almost 50. In this context, while I was significantly less prepared, I felt much more comfortable. I think the poor preparation contributed to weakness in that I sometimes left out critical information, but it may have contributed to my poise. I often think well on my feet, and in this situation I might have come just short preparation-wise of the valley of awkwardness and found a balance between preparation and on-the-spot invention. In doing so, I feel like I balanced my strength of improvisation with my weakness of flaws in public speaking. Looking back, I know that my eye contact again was fairly superficial, but I feel that I was more composed. Perhaps this is a result of the group setting or the change in my preparation, but I believe I performed much more effectively in this setting.