Pet Peeves: A Short Story

I stood there in anticipation, speech in hand, facing the crowd. Then, I ripped apart the speech, but I had no worries about the paper. After all, I had already memorized the whole speech. At that moment, my goal was to inspire people with my speech. I had never thought I would be able to stand there in the gaze of a giant audience.

In SGA, an E-board’s secretary duties involve keeping an accurate recording of all meetings and holding a record of all paperwork throughout the length of their office term. The skills required for that position are organization, written and verbal communication skills, and punctuality. Along with the position, each year at graduation, every E-Board member is given a task to complete during graduation ceremony; my task was to write a one-minute speech that coincided with the senior class gift I was to present at graduation. I had experience in making public speeches in front of a crowd but never in front of thousands of men, woman and children on such a memorable day. So upon delivering my speech, I had written and rewritten my speech making sure my message was clearly stated and my speech flowed. I practiced every single day before graduation and the morning of graduation. Anxiety had filled by body causing me to sweat and feel waves of heat before walking on stage to deliver my minute-long speech. However, once at that podium and under those blinding lights, I delivered my speech with confidence, ease and clarity, just like I practiced, making that experience the biggest and scariest yet, most fulfilling task I’ve ever

As I walked out of my dorm that morning for my 9am class, I checked my schedule to see where I needed to go. My first class was public speaking in room 232. My stomach instantly dropped. The calmness I once felt left my body in a rush. Public speaking was my worst fear. I stuttered and mumbled and shook each time I entered a crowded room. Speaking in front of a whole classroom has never been on my bucket list. I fretfully continued my journey to room 232. I attempted to give myself a pep talk along the way to help calm my nerves, but nothing was helping. I told myself that this was not

However, I recall that the minute I began the first few lines of my real performance, my heart pounded fast and my voice wavered. I have heard that this anxiety is quite usual, especially when one is a novice speaker. However, I managed to stabilize after a second or so, and was able to gain control of my emotions. One of my peers also observed my gesture of putting my hands in my pockets quite often during the presentation. My friend, Joshua, noticed I slurred a couple of my words in my poem. Although these mistakes were completely sub-conscious, it is important for me to correct them as they could be potential sources of distraction for the audience and can steal their attention away from the actual performance. Some of my friends advised me to memorize my poem by thinking about some analogies, but I refused to do so as I wanted to actually know the symbolic meaning of my poem. I believe that the key to delivering a good performance is practice, confidence and knowledge of matter, not performing from pure memorization! My opinion on spoken word this year has still not changed, and I still believe it is essential to include into this year's curriculum. I have reflected on my weaknesses, and am ready to perform better in the near

- What I did well during my speech was looking at my audience. I was always facing my audience and have a quick view to my PowerPoint. I believe I did well on these aspects because I wasn’t like the other students always looking at the PowerPoint and not even facing the audience. I know this is a public speaking class and the point is to talk to our audience while facing them.

As I timidly approached the podium with jittery hands and a shaky voice I looked up to see all eyes in the entire school focused on me, listening to my every word and watching my every move, I realized messing up wasn’t an option. I nervously cleared my throat and began to give my speech, the speech that would ultimately end up securing me the title of vice president for the 2016 senior class. Desperately trying to sound as normal as possible, without hesitating for too long, I blew threw the speech, not even hearing a single word of which I spoke. Thus most of it has ended up a repressed blurry memory stored in the back of my brain.

People have all different kinds of pet peeves, and some bother them more than others. Extreme couponing, waiting in long lines, and disrespectful people are some of my pet peeves while shopping. Shopping can be a difficult task when people annoy others' in stores. With all that being said, I would like to encourage people to treat others the way you want to be treated wherever you

I did not expect this lack of effort from you,” he lectured. That was the breaking point of my composure. The tears that I had been holding back rushed down my face, and I was angry at myself for letting my presentation go to waste. How could I explain to my teacher that I truly had practiced? How could I tell him that I had repeated my soliloquy in the shower, presented it in front of my roommate so many times that she could recite it without thinking, practiced it in different voices in the mirror, and even read it in my head before falling asleep? I had done everything I could to prepare, but as soon as I stood in front of the class, my mind went

Standing in that long, obscure hallway, I could feel my stomach turning over and over like the sea on a stormy night. “What did I get myself into this time?” I thought to myself as I investigated each of my competitors waiting their turn to compete. I had worked tirelessly to prepare myself for today. The hours consumed typing and retyping a speech that had to have just the right phrasing. I had my mother and two of the best teachers I knew proofread speech and give me honest feedback. I ran through my speech numerous times, so much so that I was sure I could recite it in my sleep. I even rehearsed responses to the hypothetical questions the judges might ask me, and listened to my speech on repeat for two hours on the bus. It all came down to this. My opportunity to present at the West Virginia State FBLA Competition was a few minutes away. I sought to place at the State’s not only for myself and my club, but also for my mother. Prior to getting out of the car this morning, she gave me one of her famous pep talks to set me on my way. After that and months

Not putting the time when it can to going over my outline and rehearsal made it difficult to communicate towards my audience. Even though I my audience provided positive feedback I still feel that it could have been better. I did have verbal clutter and I also didn’t use hand jesters as a part of my communication. In addition to my second speech, I felt that I got lost for a little bit even though I manage to pull myself together. I feel now, this could have easily been fixed if I had the time to practice my

Well, the speech was really fun to prepare for it, even though the grade is not what I expected. It pretty awesome too when giving the speech because I can see the audiences inner desire. And their laugh and some smile, it shows it all. I got their attention when I first open up the slide because that was the moment when our generation mostly looking for. And that was love, but that not what they expected. I was laughing inside because of that. While giving the speech, I notice I made too many mistakes and know what my weakness, strength is. I can see my strength in organizing my speech with the step of Monroe’s Motivated Sequence because of that my speech went a lot smoother. In addition to that, I was able to get my points across the audience. The thesis of my topic was easily understood by the audience because my earlier slide about finding love caught their attention. That was brilliant, but I can see that my transition is not smooth on every slide. And that is my weakness I have to work on. It's still not as bad as my communication because I know that I’m quadruple-lingual. That make it really hard for me to speaking

A pet peeve is a specific thing that bothers you every single moment. I don’t like it when workers are giving buyer poor customer services. This sincerely gets my blood pressure going. When it comes to client happiness, bad patron service is not a good thing. I feel one of the reasons why business have poor customer service is because they personnel get overwhelmed. When I’m at the other end and I’m the buyer, I have no tolerance for ill-mannered staff and poor customer service. Another pet peeve I have is when employees gossip at work. In the work environment, chatter is a motions that can generate, divert, and weakness laborers work fulfillment. Negative conversation can generate output misgivings, confidence issues, worker engagement, and

A study was done that showed men have more trouble and anxiety than women do speaking to another culture. When you get nervous about public speaking, your brain tries to help you by making your hands shake, knees quiver, and stomach flutter. Which really makes you more nervous than before. Whatever the reason of your nervousness, your brain gets conflicted. You want to do great, but you're not sure if you can actually pull it off. Your breathing increases, your adrenaline starts to pump, and your blood starts rushing through your veins. Then your anxiety starts up, with rapid heartbeats and perspiration

When I gave my speech, I felt confident. I don't exactly have a fear of public speaking- anyone who knows me could tell you that. I looked out to the entire audience for the entire speech because I didn't use note cards. I also kept my energy up throughout the speech which helped keep the audience focused on the speech. I made some jokes, and the audience laughed at most of them, which was a good feeling. But because I failed to fully memorize the speech, there were times that I was left trying to figure out the exact phrasing, which took away from the performance slightly, even though I don't believe it was that big of a deal. I also made a pun by ending my speech with "My speech is all ogre now" and very few people caught it. This was probably due to my poor

I noticed that I glanced at people for a short time and then looked to someone else quickly after. I didn’t really make a personal connection with the audience in this way, and that is something that I really want to improve upon for my next speech. One of the biggest things that I struggled with in my speech was my use of vocal fillers. I said “um” and “so” more times than I would like to admit. I think that this was partially because I wasn’t using my notecards like I should have been, but saying “um” is a nasty public speaking habit that I need to get rid