Cesar Reyes - Reflection - Group #1

Public Speaking Reflection

    I have always been a social butterfly, where I enjoy talking to everyone and enjoy meeting new people. Until it is time to talk in front of a public regarding an academic topic or project, I am part of it. Over the passage of the years, I have been practicing through exercises and practice to boost my performance during presentations or public speaking to a big group of listeners. During my experience taking Introduction to Public Speaking, I got introduced to techniques to control anxiety and stress during the period of speaking, but I dug deeper into what the common reactions are when you have anxiety while public speaking. During this chapter, I learned about rules, steps, and ways of overcoming similar problems regarding this topic, and I would like to explain how I felt over my presentation, what I learned over these chapters, and what I saw during my classmates' turns, with my point of view and silly images.

Before the Speech. 

    Getting ready to speak about an interesting topic has never been a problem for me. I spend a couple of hours breaking down my part of the presentation in bullet points to cover every idea stated in the material. Presenting in a Zoom meeting was a new experience for me since I usually take classes on campus. I must admit it got on my nerves, but it does not mean I have not done this before, so I prepared myself by stretching, relaxing, fixing my posture, and reviewing the text before joining the meeting. Lucky for me, my group decided to go first, so we got the relief of getting it out of the way. (I have always liked to go first on evaluations to set a standard for others and have all the information fresh.) After the professor joins and couple of sips from my morning coffee, we get some instructions regarding how the flow of the class is going to be to guide us as the first group, and the speaking time begins.

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During the Speech.

    Structure-wise, my part of the presentation was closer to the end of the project, and, in addition, I volunteered to take care of the support material while the other group members were presenting. When my part was up, I was relaxed, confident about the material I must cover, and stress-relieved. Aside from the fact that I got some concepts scrambled, everything went smoothly without complications. My group was on point on each of their parts, setting a good standard for the rest of my classmates next to present. The chapter assigned to us mainly covered attitudes and tips to follow from both listeners to make the interaction less dense. Something that I held in mind while presenting was to foment a positive attitude for learning by making them clear on my view of the topic, covering the idea and concept as I understood it, so they have a better understanding of the information that is being transmitted. We, as students that don’t have that much experience in public speaking, always set our mindset to imagine a scenario where the most minimal detail can go wrong while standing in front of a public or our own classmates, just to realize we have the same goal of learning and improving certain skills for our future goals and pathways.

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After the Speech.

    Since everything went smoothly, the professor congratulated us for a good presentation, gave us some feedback (via Zoom message) to state how our turn was, and proceeded to keep the flow of the class by giving an introduction to the next group. I felt a relief at getting this assignment done and hoped to see my classmates have a good performance. As others did with me, I paid attention to their work the same way they did with me. Some topics and PowerPoints were very entertaining, mostly because the content they cover, like beginning and ending a speech, delivering a speech, informative speaking, and persuasive speaking, are chapters that would boost my personal growth for this class, my work environment, and future opportunities and projects I plan to work on. Since I am pursuing a medical-field career, one of the experiences I need to have sharp is good communication and projection of information and customer service to perform the best quality regarding talking to a patient or giving a speech regarding a job being completed.

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My Conclusion.

    Even though I have done public speaking before, and it was the first time presenting in front of a Zoom meeting where everyone was paying attention to me while I was talking without the possibility of having eye contact, I enjoyed this experience, and I would love to do it again; I always try to surpass my achievements or goals, and this experience would be one of those I would try to improve the best. Not only to take the practice, but also to take the knowledge covered in these chapters that are going to help in the future to improve the connection between speaker and listener, how to improve the control of nerves before presenting, and how to prepare for scenarios like this. A good reflection I would like to leave you with after reading this post is to keep in mind that we are all humans that are not perfect; all of us could make any mistake due to a bad day or maybe not having the most experience. But something we should always keep in mind is that mistakes are made for a reason, to help us learn and show us an experience that would boost our personal growth. Never be afraid of not doing it right; even the most famous and successful people made mistakes earlier on in their careers or lives. This is just my way of looking at life’s problems because I came across a phrase by Albert Einstein that says, “Once you stop learning, you start dying,” and it is a philosophy that helped me in a moment in my life when I was in limbo, so I try to share this message with others to motivate them like it did me.