Facing the Biggest Fear

Public speaking; when I hear this term, I feel nervous. Today, the first half of class was about public speaking. Jennifer Madden was the guest speaker who gave us tips on the key points we should follow during public speech or presentation. According to her, it is necessary to make an eye contact with the audience, focus on our body language and make the speech articulate. Some of the important things to keep in mind during a speech or presentation are to include logos, pathos, ethos, a clear goal, attracting/strong introduction and conclusion. I made sure I noted down all the advice Jennifer gave because we would have to give a presentation next Friday. 

For a person like me, who has uneasiness speaking in front of everyone, the workshop proved to be very beneficial. My fear of speaking up front has not gone away but after learning about the things I need to focus on during the presentation gave me somewhat of relief. I think I have plenty of time to prepare my presentation and I will practice every day to be ready for next Friday. Jennifer told us that we will have to break up into two groups and practice everything learned in 2 hours for our afternoon session. 

After lunch, we had to come back and give a small presentation on either our Action Plan or a topic given by Dean. This idea sounded nerve-wracking to me. “Speaking in front of all the classmates? I won’t be able to do it”, I thought. I had no choice but to give an impromptu presentation. During lunch, I had planned out everything I wanted to say about my Action Plan but as we met in a group, I changed my idea and thought to talk about dream work. Whenever I have to speak in front of people, I am in a rush and try to finish as soon as I can. I talked about my dream to work in one of the organizations in Nepal which works on preventing human trafficking. During the presentation, I spoke very quickly and it was not the best thing to do. Well, I guess no one is perfect the first time and we learn from our mistakes. I was given feedback from my classmates and I will take them in consideration to improvise my speaking skills. Facing one my biggest fear was definitely terrifying but I learned ways to develop my skills. 

Inside Siena

It had been a while since we had seen Ms. Neal so we had a dinner at Siena. Siena seems to be a busy restaurant because last time we were there, we saw large number of people gather and it was same this time. It must be one of the well known restaurant in town. Being a vegetarian, I had to check which food choice did not have any kind of meat in it. I was not quite sure what one of the words meant so I took help of Google. During dinner, some of us shared our views on our class with Ms. Neal. Once all of us were done with dinner, Ms. Neal dropped us back at our dorm.  

It is unbelievable that we only have one week left at Brown. I did not realize that time was going by so fast and it is already Friday. Since the weekend is coming up, I had signed up for Beach trip. Unfortunately, the trip was cancelled due to some news update. I still have to figure out plans for this weekend.