Speeches, Pt. 1

The first half of the speeches are over. And I have to say, for the most part I’m very impressed. I don’t like going first, which is why I didn’t, but something that I’ve always found interesting is that most people tend to model their presentation on whoever goes first. I was actually very impressed with the content of the speeches. Even the people who “can’t write” had very appealing speeches. I was surprised at how... traumatic the whole experience seemed to be. I really didn’t have that much trouble with my speech. Here was my experience:

I got up, behind the lectern, and organized my outline so I could see it.

I said my speech, almost verbatim from what I’d been rehearsing.

I saw the 3:00 mark, and kept on going.

I ended.

Not really that big a deal, was it? Nonetheless, I didn’t really feel like I did that great of a job. I wish I could have had more time to prepare for the speech, and definitely more time to give it. Like all my writing, and, for that matter, most of the video projects I’ve worked on in the past, I go wayyyy over time. I would have liked to have had at least five minutes, possibly ten, to give my speech, because I found, when researching and writing my speech, it would have taken about three minutes to tell the story of the family, three minutes to explain what HFHGI is, and an additional three minutes to list out all of the statistics about homeless and productivity based on environment.