Salma Haque

Honestly speaking, I usually give speeches for myself. And no, I don’t mean literally looking in the mirror and actually giving a speech to myself. I mean throughout high school, whenever I had to deliver a speech in school, I never actually did it to inform, persuade, entertain or whatever the case may be. I did it for the grade. It did not matter if the class would never relate to what I’m talking about, as long as I delivered it and got it over with, I was totally fine. That’s something I really want to change. In a classroom, you need to be able to interact with your peers, have them connect to what you’re saying, make eye contact, sound enthusiastic and establish a sense of confidence and credibility, use and appropriate level of language; none of which I actually did. I would always stare down at a

piece of paper and read my speech of that. The class would get bored and because I never mingled with them they chose not to listen to me. My voice was as monotone as it could possibly be and I did not sound like I really wanted to convey a message to them. This did not only apply to speeches but even class presentations. I want to be able to actually get my audience engaged, and get a response for them. I know not reading off a paper, improvising and memorizing will be tough. Even sounding confident and passionate will be a struggle but I want to be able to overcome that.  In the future when I have to give a presentation for a reputable company and this presentation can either make it or break it for me, I really don’t want to be reading off a piece of paper. Hopefully, Speech Communications will help me overcome these obstacles and better prepare me for and out of the classroom.