Public Speaking 

Gabriella Gonzalez

    “There is a time for silence. There is a time for waiting your turn. But if you know how you feel and you so clearly know what you need to say you'll know it.

I don't think you should wait. I think you should speak now.”

― Taylor Swift

    When taking a class like Introduction to Public Speaking, you walk in expecting to be pushed out of your comfort zone and be met with a world of information that will help push you forward, regardless of what field you hope to break into post graduation. While I was expecting to be met with boundary pushing out of the box emotions, I was greeted with a safe space and a team that supports each other through their strengths and weaknesses. My group, Group 1, was the first to present in our class for this assignment. This for some of our members, myself included, had added a layer of stress. At the end of this experience, after my own group presented and after we watched our peers present their projects, I saw how wrong my assumptions were and knew that this class was a place of growth and support. 

    The start of this assignment was a bit nerve wracking for me. I knew no one in my group and the virtual aspect was not an aid in socializing with my peers. Later on, this virtual aspect would be our saving grace. When we began we used Google Docs and Google Slides to aid us with working simultaneously but at our own time and pace without having to worry about outside factors interfering. We divided and conquered with our topics and got straight to work. Throughout the planning process, we referenced each other and not just our textbook for support. Each slide and each topic opened a world of information adding depth to something that seemed so simple. For example, practice your speech became to me, practice your gestures, your key points, your body language, and your facial expressions. Knowing your audience for me became learning how to engage, and strategize how to get your point across. This bloom of information began to make a world of sense to me and my peers. 

The day before we had to present was a day off from school, in our group chat, we were wishing each other luck and hoping for the best when suddenly an outside factor began to worry us and we needed to adapt. This virtual aspect of our class which I had been worried would be a roadblock for us became our saving grace. We met on Zoom on our day off and strategized and reworked our presentation before the big day. We even had a chance to rehearse! This short experience made me feel more confident and prepared for the day of the presentation. As SGA President at my home campus, I am often thrown into a quick speech on the day of events which has made me more comfortable behind the podium, but not behind the screen. For me personally, speaking on Zoom to a class can be just as nerve wracking as speaking to a cohort on campus, maybe even a little more. To make matters worse, on the day of our presentation, I lost my voice to a cold! Thankfully, when it was my time to speak, my team, my peers, and my professor were all kind and understanding, supporting me the whole way. Once our presentation ended we celebrated each other in our group chat, elated that this all worked out fabulously. 

In the coming classes following our presentation, I knew I had to help make my peers feel just as strong and supported as they did for our group. Before each group presented I sent messages in our class chat wishing them luck and showing every ounce of support I could. What I loved the most about seeing the other groups present was not just the support we showed as a class, but the differences between each group's methods and presentation. While some groups thrived in the content area, others were wonderful with visual aids and components. Seeing the different formats and templates each group used was absolutely a joy! It was great to see how each group of students interpreted the content and assignment differently to produce their product. To me, it's important that we celebrate our differences and share our uniqueness with each other to help each one of us grow and succeed. 

Overall, this experience with my peers has been quite a positive one that I am thankful to have undergone together. From start to finish, each and every one of us has experienced some form of growth, whether it's having to have spoken independently for a presentation before or if it was just learning how to use the Google Suite to make our presentation come to life. We all learned something. For me, one of the biggest takeaways was how important it is to be flexible and practice adaptability. We as a group faced an outside factor we thought would hinder our work and come together as a team to solve it, that's teamwork. While I have some public speaking experience, the presentations each group put together have taught me the why and the how behind many aspects I consciously knew I was doing and even some that I didn't realize I had used before! I hope that my peers have come out of this project feeling stronger and more secure in their public speaking skills. Some people think you only need to learn how to speak if your job requires it, but I completely disagree. Everyone should have some foundation in speaking skills because that’s how we communicate! It's important as a professional to know your audience, know how to get your point across, know how to feel confident when speaking, and most importantly to know how to listen, and this project has helped me feel more confident in doing just that.