Six Speeches To Success In January 2003 I joined titan Toastmasters, a group that meets at Cal State Fullerton where I attend classes. I have wanted to join Toastmasters for a long time, and thought this would be a great way, since I am a graduate in history, to effectively improve my presentation skills. Generally, what happens when I set out to do something for a specific reason is that I learn and grow in other ways, as well. In November of 2003 I will have completed ten speeches which will gain me my first CTM Certified toastmasters certificate, which means I will know how to cram more information into five minutes than anyone has a right to know, all without benefit of us and ahs. Here are speeches one through five with their titles and brief notes on each. Enjoy reading them! Speech Number One: Icebreaker This speech is designed to tell the group a little about yourself and has to be two to three minutes in length. �Looking for Information� Good afternoon fellow toastmasters and guests. On Friday April 26, 2002 at approximately 6:00 a.m. the pilot of a Cessna four seater plane carrying two passengers was forced to make an emergency landing in the baseball field of Troy High School. The plane's oil seal adapter failed, causing complete engine failure, forcing Dale Ploung, a twenty year veteran pilot and his two passengers on their way to their aerospace jobs in Hawthorne to make intimate contact with a ten foot chain link fence which undoubtedly saved their lives. The pilot was bruised, the other male passenger was bruised, and the female passenger suffered a dislocated elbow. The plane was completely destroyed. You may wonder what this incident has to do with me? Being four blocks away from the accident and having an intense respect for anything that misses me by a hair's breadth I decided to see if I could locate Mr. Ploung. I did. He was easy to find having quite a presence on the Internet. Within a month I had established contact with him and before August of 2002 when I took my first flight as a passenger in a small Cessna 172 I had had several conversations with him as well as sent him approximately one million emails! This story says a lot about me. Since I was born in 1966 even though I lost my sight to cancer of the retinas two years later I have been an intensely curious person. I had a wonderful childhood and got involved in church music teams, biblical memorization contests, camping trips, meetings for young maturing females, and then I graduated from high school with honors in 1984 whereupon I proceeded to embark upon a whole new set of adventures. Between 1984 and this date I have obtained one college degree in music, been the editor of a Christian club newsletter, published 25 stories online, held many parties with food, fun and friends at my apartment nearby, performed in several choirs and Christian folk rock bands (including my own) as well as produced my own four song original lyrics demo. I have volunteered as a grief counselor with Hospice, coordinated a group of willing participants to bring meals to women who have had babies or people who have had recent surgery, traveled thirteen states, volunteered as a proofreader for a web site which houses historical documents, and have helped raise four children. As if I haven't had enough to do in all that time I thought I wanted to get married so I packed all my bags and moved to Florida only to discover through a very serious injury and a lot of time to think that I really didn't want to do that. So I came home and moved in with my father to recover from major shoulder surgery, then moved in with one of my best friends and her four kids located in Fullerton, and then back to my apartment complex. Since then I have enrolled in school as a history major, and have just been excepted into the graduate program. For the past year I have maintained a grade point average of 3.5, and probably read about sixty books to prove it. I have decided that since I am now a Pampered Chef consultant who does many kitchen demos besides everything else I do, I needed to join Toast Masters. When I lost my job in December of 2002 as a computer software trainer at Fullerton College due to budget constraints I decided to join this group and learn to improve my communication skills. So when the small plane rudely got me out of bed that Friday in April, it started within me a process of learning which was firmly established in precedent. Dale sent me pictures of his plane and has put me on his email update newsletter. He has helped me with some of the technical details of some of my writing and you can read his name in the section where I credit those who have helped me construct my stories. I have a very loose promise from him to go flying sometime. As Clayton Moor once said in his 1958 lone ranger movie called "The Lost city of Gold": Ma�am, I'm lookin for information!" That describes me to a t: I love life and even though I have had some hard moments I am always looking for new and exciting information! **Notes: This speech was given in January, 2003. Since then I have increased my grade average to 4.0. I hope to continue in this manner all through graduate school. At the end of each speech an evaluation is given, and that day, the evaluator complimented my use of imagery and said I should improve my incorporating more gestures into my speeches. Not exactly shy, I had resorted to notes. How in the world would I cram all that information into five minutes? I did it. We were off to a good start! Speech Number 2: Be Earnest February, 2003 This speech asks for you to talk on something you're passionate about. Guess what I chose? Bet you can't guess! Why I Like to Fly Today I'm going to tell you why I am absolutely, unabashedly enamored with small planes. There is just something magical and perfect about escaping the confines of the earth that is freeing, exhilarating, and wondrous. Maybe part of it comes from the fact that there are so many little movable parts on that little plane. It is a fragile piece of artwork whose only destiny is to respond to air currents. That little single-engine, overgrown bird with appendages whose usefulness is lost to the uninitiated, once airborne, becomes a living, breathing thing interacting with air currents, or even the lack of them. Slipping through the cottony clouds or the sheer clear sky looking down at man's toy-like existence makes me know that here, above the earth, life is truly a fragile thing. Perhaps the whole experience of sailing above the houses at 68k increases my respect for God and nature and man's skill at combining the structural elements with these other not always predictable forces. You can ask others why they like to fly: they will give you a variety of answers. Perhaps my reason is best summed up in these few words: risk, adventure, and a curiosity about the unknown discovered by me. I have found it. And having found it, I will eagerly anticipate my next foray into the skies above us. Speech Number 3: Organizing Your Speech March, 2003 How It�s Done You remember three weeks ago when I started my icebreaker speech with the Story of the plane making the emergency landing? I Wrote that opening with the definite intent of telling you a story but also To illustrate a good example of my character. I told you about myself in One incident and then went on to explain how that curiosity translated into Actual life experiences for me. Because I only had three minutes to tell You as much about myself as I possibly could, I had to find a way to do it Without giving you so much detail that you would be lost. But it took me a While to come up with that strategy. First the seed was planted in my head, Then it grew and matured into the three-minute presentation I made. When I Organize a speech I try to centralize everything around one theme: this time It was the curiosity theme. It's not always easy for me to tell you just How I do this: I get the idea and write it down with all its flaws and all Of its intricacies and then I take a look at it and decide which ideas need Work and which ones I can leave alone. The ideas grow in my head and I have To let them simmer sometimes and then sit down and hammer them out. I like To get the big picture in my head first, say for example, how that plane Illustrates my curiosity, and then fill in details which best show that I am Curious, and then try to tie it all up by saying that I'm curious once Again. In fact tonight when I wrote this I had been thinking about what I Would say for weeks and finally I got it all down and now you know! I'm not Quite sure that I've precisely explained everything to the best of my Ability, because honestly I'm not quite sure how it all happens, but I've Given it my best shot and told you that for me organizing ideas and the Words to say them and holding audience interest takes time and craft, and Most of all a lot of patience on my part. I can articulate ideas on the Spot, of course, I think we all do that in conversation, but if I have time I can assure you my ideas will be much clearer and more precisely expressed. Speech Number 4 April, 2003 How to Own a Restaurant Today I'd like to talk to you about dreams: dreams that we nourish through Our lives, not simply the kinds that we can conjure up as illusive images in Our sleep. Imagine with me that you are standing on a street corner in 1935 Berlin watching an Ss parade. You see the black uniforms and the double Lightning bolt insignias perhaps gleaming in the sun as the parade passes You. Suddenly, as the parade recedes into the distance you look up and see A 1990 Honda accord following close behind. What? Those two images probably Don�t harmonize very well with one representing an all-out rush toward war And another signifying later middleclass prosperity. I want to use this Point to illustrate to you that sometimes our own dreams can be just as Bizarre and we think they can only be accomplished in our sleep. I'd like to Suggest five steps you can take to accomplish the dream you have. 1. Define your dream. I want to Tell you about one of my dreams today. Since I was five years old and walked The Gleaming kitchen of my grandfather's hot dog stand in Compton, California, Walking between the aisles of the gleaming refrigerators I've wanted to own A restaurant. I've decided that I want to specialize in what can Be called comfort foods. I've grown up with some recipes like chicken and Dumplings that I really like and so I'd like to make these things and offer A place where people can relax from the big screen atmosphere and just take Time to refresh themselves on their way through their day. I don't care Right now if my idea is marketable or not, I only care at the moment about My dream. 2. Take a hard look at reality. Dreamers are Often known as people who don't look seriously at reality but I'd like to Say that in order to determine where you are and how you're going to get to Where you want to be you have to take a good, hard look at reality. I'm Often known for telling my friends and countrymen that I am known for Courting financial disaster. And I know that it takes money to run a Restaurant. I've heard that in order to own a restaurant you have to have At least two million dollars; one to invest and one to lose. I don't know If that's true or not but certainly I've seen a lot of restaurants come and Go and like I said I do tend to court financial disaster so I need to take a Look at how I'm going to get the money to run my restaurant. Is it going to be through the help of small business loans or the sweat of my brow and the Labor of my hands? It will probably be a combination of both. I need to Sit down and plan out how much it's going to cost to run the restaurant and Pay people to work for me. 3. Do your homework. I need to find out Just what are the safety and food laws and I probably need to find a Location for this restaurant. It may be here it maybe out of state. 4. Gather encouragement. After I've done this I need to find someone who will encourage me and say you know You can do this. Now I'm pretty self-motivated but I have to say that even The best self-starters among us need an encouraging word once in a while. 5. Hold on tight. The last thing I need is to hold on to the dream; let it Support me through The hardest, darkest times of life, through times of uncertainty and crisis, And through times when it seems as if meeting personal financial obligations is An endless drudgery. I know that with persistence and planning I will wake Up one day and look up and see the sign over the door that says ShellBell's Cafe. In October 1941 at a public school in England, Winston Churchill Told a group of boys to "never, never, never, never, never give in!" All he Suggested we give in to our principals of honor and good sense. I'd like to Leave you by saying never give in, and someday you'll wake up and realize Your dream has been accomplished and not just limited to the images that we Can conjure up in our sleep. Speech number 5: vocal Variety April, 2003 Note: ** = vocal emphasis Time Travel Being a Masters candidate for a degree in history has been a lot of fun for me, now that we're somewhat passed the theoretical aspects of history. History is a fairly new discipline, perhaps 200 years old or so, not being presented from a purely theological perspective, though that's not always* bad! History is the story of human events, full of drama, and grief, joy, tragedy, really bad decisions, really good decisions, monumentally bad ideas, sparkling good ones, and for me, a creative writer, it has presented a wonderful array of opportunities for what I like to call time travel. Yes, time travel. Sometimes when we think of time travel we think of some kind of fancy machine with switches and levers that transports people back to the age of dinosaurs or some biblical time or even some event occurring fifty years ago! Time travel is what we do in the movies, it is a suspension of reality; you leave the hustle and bustle of the concrete, urban middle class world around you and escape into some Cecil B. DeMille epic, or Steven Spielberg's portrayal of World war II, or Oliver Stone's idea of Kennedy, or even that million-dollar, special-effects-riven spectacle that everyone went nuts over: Titanic! Now, whatever you think of these movies, if you think their special effects and plot lines were **a little** too much or **not enough** or maybe just right, the idea, from each director's perspective, was "time travel." But I want to tell you about a less expensive way to do "time travel." Writing! I've always liked to write, and since I was young I imagined a world of animals living human lives and then I discovered history, the seething story of live human events which theorists and artists like to recreate, sometimes very well; sometimes not so well. But me, I have to tell you that escaping into a favorite moment of history that portrays incredible sadness or momentous decision for me, that is amazing! I can take the details and draw them with words. I can put myself in the position of being with a "historical" figure, or being in a crowd of witnesses to some moment. And for me, it doesn't cost a dime! I don't' have to leave my house, I don't have to pay exorbitant prices to see someone else's portrayal of events, I can make them up! I can lie in bed in the early morning and imagine I'm in a nineteenth-century library witnessing Thomas Jefferson's grieving the loss of his wife, I can imagine I'm Eisenhower's driver; I can imagine that I'm Gen. H. Norman Schwartzkopf's secretary; or I can put myself in a ghetto in 1943 when Jewish children running resistance dash madly to escape pursuing enemies. I can even take historical events and make them my own events! What if I were some other general's driver? What if I took a favorite general from history, put him in a different war, and was his driver! The possibilities are endless! Writing allows me to indulge my need to escape into another world at times, and history, because it is full of the good and the bad, provides me with ample opportunity to research the facts and the settings, and then to escape. Yes, time travel! No switches needed; no levers needed; no special formulas; just an emotional connection with a person or an event, and a pen at my hand or a keyboard to write it all down, and an imagination to offer me ideas on how "it" could have happened, or how I would have responded, or what I would have been doing! Now I do have to tell you, that in some cases, I probably wouldn't have been able to be at certain events because of being a woman, or some other such reason, but I don't' care about that now�! That is the beauty of my form of time travel! I can sweep aside all the theories, the barriers, and the troubles and imagine myself as a mouse in that library, or as the general�s driver. I can take small moments out of these events and give them life! Someday you may see my work in print, but till then, and even after, I will enjoy inserting myself into the human story, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and the grand, and taking my own exciting travel adventures! Speech Number 6: Gestures This speech is about combining vocal variety and gestures. It features as its subject two different people I�ve corresponded with over the Internet. One of them, of course, is an IPilot writer. Which one, you say? Read on, you�ll see! Internet Relationships Anyone who breathes in our world today has heard of, is intimately familiar with, despises, loathes, leaves, or loves the Internet! Some thrive on cyberspace like some need coffee; they simply can't start their day without it! Still others despise, ridicule, abhor, and take complexly circuitous routes to avoid using it. Anyone who works in an office knows it, anyone who even passes by a library knows it, and some have made a life out of it. So in this intricate, fragile network of wires and chips and faces and words strung together out of little numbers and pixels and someone's engineering genius, I started thinking one day about "Internet relationships!" Oh, no, you say, not that�that's what I said.. Not that. When I was thinking about what I was going to say about Internet relationships, I conducted a search on my favorite search engine�AskJeeves, and I came up with all kinds of hits�many of which had to do with�well, you know�relationships! So just to give you a taste of what I found, here were some of the little tags people used to introduce prospective clients to their web sites: Dating is our only business, Cupid Junction, next Stop Romance! Internet Romance, mystique or mistake, Ask the Internet Therapist, Personality is not set by thirty, it can change, Affairs of the Internet Ask Jim, Advice and Answers And skipping further down in the plethora of choices I found this: Purchase Your Relationships at WalMart! Now, really! Honestly! I am of the firm conviction that the Internet is a widely useful tool, but then I'll take anything I can get my hands on and make it work�for me, so I'm not going to tell you about my love life as it relates to the Internet.. Because there isn't one�what I am going to tell you is about two very different people I've encountered on the Net�believe me I have "met" a few bizarre characters�but I'm not going to talk about them�I've chosen two distinctly different people, and I think you'll see why. First, there was the archivist from Austria a few years ago who was involved in a project trying to locate the property of Viennese Jews during the third Reich.. But he wasn't interested in me helping him with his project.. No, he was interested in telling me all about his horrible love life, by the way, not conducted on the Internet, but conducted right there in beautiful Vienna! He wanted to practice his English, I wanted to improve my German, so I would write to him in German and he would correct it, and he would write to me in English and I would correct it. He would write to me in flawless, poetic German and one man who helped me translate it said.. He thinks a lot of you.. Maybe too much, I said. I got the nerve one day to call him, and he was real�shortly after that we ceased communication..You see he married a Greek Orthodox catholic woman and, well, I guess he had more important things to discuss and do than find Viennese Jewry, or talk to me about is horrible love life which suddenly was ideal�at least that's what I think! I still have all his email, though he told me in a message that he lost all mine�not to worry, I stil have it! He was.. Interesting. Then, one more person I'll tell you about.. His name is George and he lives in Illinois. Here he is in this picture. (Passed around a magazine with his picture.) You see, George writes for a magazine called "Private Pilot" and he flies a really high-class plane: a single-engine Debonair, kind of like the Cadillac of private planes. He has a wife, and two children, he is an engineering supervisor for a nuclear power plant and spends hours writing about airplanes. We correspond infrequently, only as the need arises, and we started doing that because I was curious about small planes and found his writing informative.. But I had questions! He writes for one of those sites you have to pay to get access to.. A more specialized site, and since I'm always looking for information, well, this was PERFECT! When I was taking my first flight, the experienced pilot advised me to take it in the morning, the air is cooler and less turbulent. But I've already scheduled it for the evening, I said. No, he insisted, take it in the morning, it will be better. I'm telling you as a pilot, he said. Okay, fine, I took the flight in the evening. Because we both DRAW OUR LIFE'S pleasure from writing, I emailed him once to say that one of my columns had been officially rejected by a newspaper. He said to hang in there, he knew what that was like, but then he gave some sound advice�take editor's suggestions and try to follow them. Fair enough, I thought. I found those words shot from almost three thousand miles away very encouraging�words have life, even if they are made up of those little numbers and flecks of computer code. He stands out today because he's an example of how an "Internet relationship" can be productive and helpful, and healthy. I like George even without having met him. Across cyberspace he strikes me as a professional�I respect professionals. If you ever doubt the validity of the productiveness of Internet relationships, just think of two people corresponding across the miles: two aviation enthusiasts, one looking for answers, and one supplying them. Note: This speech received good content evaluation. The evaluator liked the word usage: �plethora of choices� �complexly circuitous routes to avoid it�, and �one looking for answers and one supplying them.� The Toastmaster for the day said it helped her see a different side of Internet Relationships. All the writers from iPilot have been extremely helpful and encouraging and wonderful, but I chose this one because it was the easiest to talk about within the framework of my speech. Notes on Evaluation. I�ve gotten comments about good imagery, good word usage, good descriptions, and passion. No matter what I say and how I say it, these things always show up. Stay tuned for more. As soon as I complete speech number ten I�ll put the rest of them up here!
Copyright © 2003 Shelley J Alongi |