Rough Daft
Brainstorming
Connecting with the audience is the key to making or breaking a speech. The most important thing I learned through doing presentations in previous school years has been eye contact. Making audience members feel like they’re having a one on one conversation with the speaker makes the speech sound more personal and catered to them. Along the same line, knowing the target audience of the speech and relating it specifically to them can help them to understand the content within the speech and the relevant language can deepen that connection. As well, smiling and having good facial expressions can engage your audience. If you look bored or disinterested, they will too.
Learning about becoming a better academic seemed the most appealing to me as I have never been a great student. Until Covid-19 I didn’t really care about learning, just passing my classes. After being sent home last semester and having to finish classes remotely, I realized how much I had taken my education for granted, and I wanted to change that. Now that I actually care about learning, researching how to be a better academic version of myself seemed like the perfect way to kick off this semester. Especially now with Corona and the different approaches we now have to take with education because of it, there is so much to learn.
As far as my outline, I want to start off by talking about why I chose this topic, as well as give some background of what I know so far about being an academic student. Moving along, I will transition into a list of basic things to do to become a better academic student, such as getting a good night’s sleep, eating balanced meals, keeping a good line of communication with professors, asking questions, and other standard things as such. But I want to try and find more unique academic tips, especially given the circumstances we are learning in today. I will have to brainstorm and research specifics but catering to the online/hybrid format is going to be my main focus. I then plan to wrap it up by tying back to my original motivations.
Outline
Hi, my name is Haley Short, I am a sophomore majoring in communications, but today I am going to talk about freshman Haley majoring in psychology. My path to becoming a better academic student began when I realized I did not like psychology at all.
It was a career path I chose in 7th grade while sitting in a Friendly’s with my mom. She told me how she almost went to college for psychology but wasn’t able to afford it. I promised myself then to make her proud, to live out the dream she never got to. From that point forward I viewed my education as something to accomplish for other people.
Needless to say, that didn’t really stick well, and I was not a great academic student. I was doing assignments for mere completion and cared far more about how I looked to other people than studying for tests. I ended up at UNE because it was the first college I looked at and they accepted me. No real thought or effort was given to my education, until I started my first year and my first psychology class and nearly failed it.
Choosing a major I ended up not liking caused me to slack off even more. My grades dropped and I did not care about academics at all. It wasn’t until we were sent home last semester and my education came to a halt that I realized how badly I wanted to learn, and I was just in the wrong place. One major change later, I came back this semester a brand-new student. I spent most of quarantine preparing for a fresh start and practicing ways to become a better version of my academic self, and these are some of the things I learned.
The first lesson comes from my uncle at a socially distanced graduation party, where I found out he was a history major in college, despite being head of marketing at a well-known pharmaceutical company today. It was then I learned to invest in your education. As long as you are actively learning as much as you can and making the right connections within your education, you can do just about anything no matter what your degree is.
For me personally, investing in my education started with finding out what I actually wanted to do instead of what I thought I should do. I was miserable in a major I thought would be good for me and make my parents proud. Stepping out of that and into something I am passionate about motivated me to want to learn and do the work.
Speaking of work, something that may seem obvious, but I never really considered before is actually doing the readings. SparkNotes and chapter summaries have always been my best academic friends, but I missed out on so much context and extra information that might not have been on my tests or quizzes but could have helped me out in the long run.
Another thing I found to be very important is staying organized. For me that meant making to-do lists and mapping out time so I can stay on track. Equally as important is committing to that list, finding the motivation to complete all of the tasks I set out to accomplish.
Last but not least, learning how to take effective notes. It took me a while to figure out that the purpose of taking notes is not to copy down PowerPoint slides or textbook paragraphs word for word, but rather summarizing the information and tailoring it to your understanding.
I am still getting better at learning and accepting this information, and I know there’s a lot that I still need to learn. Regardless, I hope there’s at least one thing you heard that proves useful, and I look forward to learning from you as well. Thank you.
My Best Advice and Why it’s My Best
During peer review, the best advice I gave was centered around how to make the overall look of the speech better. Focusing on things such as body language, tone of voice, and developing better connections with the audience. I believe this was my best advice as I did not want to critique too much on the actual content of the speech or try to change their points in any way. Any speech can be a great speech no matter what the content of it is as long as you look like you know what you are talking about and are able to establish that trust and relationship with the audience.
My Peer’s Best Advice and Why it’s Their Best
The best advice I received was also related to the overall look to my speech. They suggested I love closer to the camera to make myself more in focus so people can see my facial expressions better. Being closer would also better conceal how fidgety I was. I never thought about the impact of my camera positioning for this assignment, I was trying to frame it to be as much as a live speech as possible, but I did not take into account how that would obscure my face. I was relieved to hear this advice, to take advantage of the formatting of this speech and use it to present myself better.
Reflection After Peer Review
Finished Lone Wolf Speech
Reflection of Project as a Whole
This was the most I have ever prepared for a speech before. I took a public speaking class in high school and I am currently taking an effective public speaking class and in neither of those did I prepare for a speech in such a way. I really enjoyed the layout of this assignment; it wasn’t too fast paced and actually gave me time to revise and edit my speech without feeling like I was falling behind. Having it be on video instead of in person was nice as it made me comfortable with speaking on camera, which is not something I could have done before. It also made peer review easier, as in the past we would just revise the outlines and it did not have the same effect as reviewing a live take. I think that in the future, even if I am not assigned to, I am going to use a similar format for other projects, such as recording myself beforehand and revising my draft after viewing my dry run performance.
Watching the dry run of my speech back, I realized I wanted to change just about everything about it. I was trying to cram too much information into the time allotted, and a lot of it was not necessary information worth cramming. I think the concept of my speech is sound, I like the direction and general area I was in. My dry run was very story based, and less about the actual points of the topic I chose. For my final run, I am going to condense the story as much as possible, because I would still like to keep it in there, and focus and elaborate more on what I came up with in terms of becoming a better version of my academic self. I will rewrite my speech and my outline to allow for a more conversation like speech, not so fast paced and like I am throwing information. Looks-wise I will also be closer to the camera, as some good advice from my peers suggested that my face was a bit obscured in my dry run and they couldn’t see much emotion. I also drank an energy drink before filming it so I was moving quite a bit, a mistake I will not be repeating for my final run.