Alex Abramov

The main difference between the monologue and personal experience for me came down to the point of view. When practicing the monologue, I’d try to imagine myself as the character. It would pretty much be me reading straight off the page. In the personal experience, it came down to getting my message across in my own words. As I practiced I’d try to limit myself from looking at the index card.

After watching the video of me, I have to say that I was under-prepared. I caught a bit of this while I was presenting, in the form of me not being able to speak smoothly and without glancing at the index cards.  I definitely needed to practice more. I also noticed my speech was a bit monotone. Once again, I can trace this back to the fact that I wasn’t delivering a message, but instead just repeating words.

The biggest factor in catching my attention was the passion displayed by my classmates’ for their experience. When they read like it was important, it made me just want to keep watching. A few of the speeches had moments where they went off point, and that formed a sort of block in the message.

  This picture resembles the mental blocks that happened while I was presenting. The road is the message, and the wall is usually me freezing up trying to remember the next point. Hopefully next time,  I could remove, or at least decrease the size of, the wall by practicing more.