Speech 101
2008 November 20
“There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create.” — John Lennon
God, I love that quote.
Anyway…so in addition to my abnormal psych class, I’m also taking good old Speech 101. It’s a required class of course, otherwise I wouldn’t be caught dead in there. I have a serious public speaking phobia. Thank God for Xanax! Seriously though, I decided to get it over with during my first semester back in school since I knew it would be tough for me. Surprisingly enough, I actually enjoy the class and especially tonight, learned a few things that I love about myself.
Tonight we had to deliver an instructional speech, with a partner. This was the first non-solo speech, and also the first speech that required audience participation. We had to choose something that we could teach the class to do, as a team, in 10-12 minutes. When the instructor first explained all of this, I got a huge knot in my stomach, had no clue who to choose for a partner or what in the hell to pick as a subject.
It turned out that a very nice woman in class who is also in my psych class, didn’t have a partner yet, so we teamed up. In discussing ideas for what to teach the class we learned that we both like to scrapbook. So, we decided to teach the class how to create a scrapbook page. It didn’t even feel like a speech and I had a good time with it.
I was once a completely obsessed scrapbooker. I went to Scrap Mania at Archivers with my girlfriends every chance I could. We went away for scrapbooking weekends at least once a year. I have books and books filled with pages I’ve done of my kids, friends, family, vacations, etc. Half of our spare bedroom houses my supplies and most of the closet too. I used to be up on all the latest trends, techniques, tools, and products. Then, when all the drama and turmoil in my life took over, I got further and further away from it. I wasn’t conscious of it at first, but now I realize that I haven’t really scrapbooked in well over a year. I do run a scrapbooking business and I do enjoy working on projects for others and certainly don’t mind getting paid for it. But it’s not the same as just scrapbooking for myself, for fun. I love my creative side and am grateful that this class, that I didn’t want to take, reminded me of that.
I also learned how much I love meeting new people. In addition to having scrapbooking and two classes in common, my partner and I are also both married moms who have returned to college in our 30′s and she even runs her own business too. Who knows, we may never see each other again after this semester, or we could end up being good friends, scrapbooking at each others’ houses sometime. Either way, I’m happy to have met her and she was a great teammate for this speech.
So, did I learn how to give an instructional speech? Yes. But, more importantly I learned a few things about myself that I love.
Thanks for stopping by!
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LOVE the quote!! Wonderful self-discovery! (and kudo’s to you for going back to school!) Thanks for sharing. Love your blog too!