The paper I originally wrote back in my first month within the EB MS program stated:
For the extent of the masters program I’m going to be participating in Toastmasters. I currently do not know much about the organization except that it helps people improve their public speaking abilities. I’m fairly confident about my personal public speaking abilities however, there is always room for improvement. By the end of the program I’m hoping to have organized an event through Toastmasters and possibly hold an elected office. I feel Toastmasters is a great opportunity for me to expand upon an already firm base set of skills I think I have. Toastmasters is a worldwide organization helping people develop their communication skills. Communication is one of the most important things for any business professional and is critical for conducting business in a national or global market. With the help of Toastmasters I hope to develop a clearer and more professional means of communication with others. Clear and professional communication puts forth a foot to the rest of the world showing others who you are and what you are about. Improper or unprofessional communication shows a lack of interest or intelligence to others and disrespect for their time. As the old saying goes – time is money, so when someone has to take time to interpret a message because it wasn’t well organized or professional they’re essentially wasting money. Additionally, Toastmasters helps a person improve their listening skills, presentation skills, leadership potential and ones ability to motivate and persuade others. This is all accomplished by making presentations to a group of peers, evaluating other peers’ presentations and by offering and receiving positive critiquing from one’s peers. I feel Toastmasters will help me greatly improve my communication and public speaking skills and my self-confidence as well.
Looking back I realize that I did not organize an event, and also did not hold an elected office - I opted to take an internship outside of school instead - however I don't feel that this limited the amount of information and knowledge I gained through Toastmasters.
I am glad that I decided to participate within Toastmasters, and have learned a little bit more than I knew back then. During the course of my time with Toastmasters I was able to give a few speeches, but also observe many more. In this observation I learned a great deal about the flaws within my own speaking manner, and have taken great steps to correct these; one example is that I certainly rely a lot less on notes now than I did at the beginning of the program - the key is practice, practice, practice and who's going to argue with the famous musician Saadi.
My favorite speech I gave with Toastmasters was my "icebreaker" speech, which is a form of self-introduction to the chapter. There are several methods of doing the speech - common theme, narrative, or chronological - however I chose to utilize the common theme in my speech, for as I progress through school and life I've come to notice a trend in my life that you'll hear about as you read the speech:
Have you ever been wrong before? I’m wrong from time to time – but usually it’s not over the small things. I know all sorts of random facts – like that the film "The Libertine" was lit almost exclusively with candles not lights, or that Ohio State has not lost a football game to an instate rival since 1921, but when I am wrong… I do it right.
For example, I wanted to be a rocket scientist from when I was a little kid. When I was six I told the baby sitter that’s what I wanted to do. Usually kids want to be an astronaut, or a fire fighter, something like that, but not me! As I grew up I stuck with that dream. Have you ever seen the movie top gun? Usually that movie makes people want to be a fighter pilot, not me, when I saw the film as a kid I decided I didn’t want to be a rocket scientist any more, but wanted to build air planes. I studied all through high school to go off to college for aerospace engineering… while I was in high school though I started working for a website doing concert reviews and band interviews. I loved concerts, loved the atmosphere – the lights go down, the curtain opens, the first hit of the snare, screech of the guitar – it was all so impressive to this 16 year old kid from a town of only 12,000 people who had never been exposed to anything like that. But my family and everything I knew said I could never get a job working in that industry – you had to know how to play an instrument or sing to do that, and I couldn’t do that… So I went off to apply for college – and to my surprise I got into the 12th ranked school for aerospace engineering. After a few months I realized that what I was going to school for wasn’t what I wanted to do for a living. So I stood up in the middle of class, walked out, and changed majors. I later dropped out to come to Full Sail instead – after I’d learned that I could get a job doing what I enjoyed – working in live concerts!
Not only was I wrong about wanting to be a rocket scientist, but I was also wrong about not being able to get a job in the music industry working concerts. Isn’t it awesome when you’re wrong about something so big as your future?
Now that I learned I was wrong, I’m glad I was. Nothing beats being wrong except learning that you’re wrong and learning from it. The best part about it – is getting to explain to my relatives how wrong we all were about the existence of this industry we all have become a part of.
Another one of the speeches I gave during my time with Toastmasters was an entry into the annual Humorous Speech Contest, which I was able to take Second Place (losing by only 1 point to the now president of the chapter!) - the speech goes as follows:
Why is it so hard to write something?
We communicate every day, but for some reason when we are asked to write something, we procrastinate, we delay, we slack off, yet we know we have to write SOMETHING, ANYTHING, then it gets to a point where you just don’t care what…
So – in desperation you do some research. Google – it’s a wonderful thing! We look and we look.. then… we being to start jotting things down. Eventually – we get fed up and throw it all away….
**throw paper away** (Page Break)
And we start over..
And over
And over again.
So now that we’ve decided on a topic to talk about – we finalize our research. As arduous a task as this is, it’s easily one of the most conflicting points of the paper/speech whatever it is you’re writing.
You know what you want to talk about, and you know about what you want to talk about, but you don’t quite know how to talk about it.
So you flip on ESPN and see who’s winning. You take the dog for a walk. You see who’s on ichat. Then, when you finally realized there’s nothing to distract you, you just decide to start typing and writing what you think will work. And at first it becomes an awkward creation.
BAM! All of a sudden it has meaning! It has a path to travel.
And you follow it down the rabbit hole, until eventually you can’t think of anything else but how to make this little chunk of coal you’ve began a polished gem of literary greatness.
Now that this hunk of coal has become this wonderful creation you have. You’re done! Or are you?
Time to present. So you sit in the back, and you get nervous, you know those butterflies in your stomach. So you close your eyes and hope maybe something will happen so you don’t have to present – fire, tornado, famine, war, you’re not picky, you just don’t want to present today! And then it’s time… the teacher calls on you, or the toastmaster does, and you stand up. But not all of you stands up at once, your heart slides down to your stomach and stays on the chair as you walk to the front, then you pass the point of no return and round the corner everything catches up to you and you realize that you know what you’re talking about! Crisis averted right?
Then afterwards, you feel the adrenaline rushing out of your system and you relax, and bask in the glory of your completion – just to realize you still have to be judged… graded… so you go back and grade yourself – did I meet this requirement? I think I did. What about that one? I know I did that! And you ask your friends – Joey how am I doing? So you wait and wonder – just how did I do – and the worst part sets in – you start to doubt your skills and progress… but you learn to not doubt yourself – and in the end – if your ever wondering how a presentation is going – just know, everyone out there is still in their underwear under whatever they’re showing to everyone else.
Obviously the speech loses quite a bit by just having the written portion, as a persons facial expressions, tone of voice, and body language in general make up nearly 90% of how we communicate with people - and I'd say even more when it comes to interpreting humor - however, I felt the speech was well written and shows how a person can suffer with the difficulties of preparing something (not excluding a leadership portfolio!)
In addition to utilizing Toastmasters to expound upon my leadership traits I pursued an internship while going through school. This internship was with Fly South Music Group. At Fly South I have faced many challenges, and interesting assignments along the way. I have been forced to come up with creative solutions, and helped to develop unique marketing and promotions plans for artists, CD releases, and special events as well. From humble beginnings rolling T-shirts to make them easier to ship out I have moved up to helping organize most of the promotional efforts for the upcoming Anti-Pop Music Festival in downtown Orlando.
My internship started off with helping transfer Boyce Avenue's merchandise from a third party vendor to being handled internally by the management company I work for. While handling the transition I also helped out with the hiring, payment, and management of all the ticket takers for Vans Warped Tour in Orlando, FL while also assisting in promotions effort for the festival and other events around the same time. After this transition was complete I moved on to helping promote Brooke Waggoner's new CD release entitled "Go Easy Little Doves" by researching media outlets to pass her new release on to have reviewed and generate publicity for prior to release. After handling this research I began working on the upcoming Anti-Pop Festival which takes place in November. During the course of this internship I got the ultimate opportunity to practice honing my leadership skills - I was given the opportunity to become the Super Villains tour manager - and I gladly jumped at the opportunity and have since been working both the internship and as TM as well.
