persuasive presentations

When we were first told that our last speech was going to be a group persuasive presentation my heart kinda sank a little bit. I am the type of person who is always put in groups and looked at as the smart kid, and therefor always had to do the most if not all of the work. Therefor I feel I had a pretty decent reason to feel so scared when this idea was brought up to the class. Once I was put into my group I felt a little bit more assured, and this last week has made me feel so much better. My group mates, so to say, are awesome. Everyone is willing to do their share. One person doesn't have more to do than the other, and we all agreed on a topic easily, and get along just fine. In highschool it was never this way. I guess it just goes to show me yet one more major differance between college and highschool, even at the junior college level.

I have a dream

I just finished watching the Martin Luther King Jr. I Have a Dream speech. I believe that this speech was amazingly powerful. Mr. King did not move around a lot but his voice and his message and the feeling one gets about his passion for this speech and the message it is sending is amazing. He did not move around at all, though he did have a podium with a microphone, and that probably restricted his movement,he did not even use had gestures. His voice and the impact of his words probably were enough to put aside the fact of his lack of movement though. I did enjoy not only the message he was trying to send, but the very end of the speech. It seemed like Martin Luther King had gotten a second wind at the end of his speech. His voice got louder, he began to make hand gestures and he really brought home the message he was trying to give in his speech. I believe that this speech was amazing, not only did the presentation of this speech have a lot to do with my feelings, but the message in and of itself was revolutionary.

Group Work

Class this week made me think. I looked around the classroom and watched everyone interacting with eachother. We didn't all know eachother in the beginning of the semester, but if a stranger were to walk into the classroom one would think that the students in the classroom were the best of friends, and knew eachother well. I believe that we've all made this kinship with eachother, and gained this friendship for several differant reasons. Since the first day of class, our professor had us engage in group work that had to do with the asking our other classmates questions and getting to know eachother. Another reason why our class room is so comfortable to be in, is the fact that we are all friendly people. I think our classroom is so friendly also because we all share one fear, well sort of fear, of getting up in front of a group of people and talking. This is also a communication class, so we are all communicating on a weekly basis, and maybe thats what our professor strived to do with our class, to make us feel comfortable enough to communicate with one another, not only properly, but in a friendly matter. This idea, and to give us a little extra boost of self esteem, self confidence, by feeling comfortable in this class room, and to make us feel it's okay to communicate our feelings and ideas.

Class Today

Today in class we mostly talked about putting together a outline for our speeches. We began class talking about the seven steps to correctly put together a speech, and had to get into a group we had yet to be in. This I didn't find to be to hard of a thing to do, considering the fact that I feel I am a pretty friendly person, and the whole class pretty much knows each other to a decent extent right now. Then my group came up with the idea of creating an entertaining speech about carnies. I really didn't think that this would be as controversial of an issue as it turned out to be later in class. I understand that I may have other classmates that live in lower income families, but were not trying to take a jab at those people. The purpose of our speech was just to entertain people with funny instances of carnie people and their work. I really couldn't see the bad in that situation, but I understand my professor's warnings, and the fact that she was trying to get us to actually analyze our audience before the speech. All in all I thought it was a good class, but then again, I've yet to have a bad one...knock on wood.

Culture Speeches

In our last class, we had to present our culture speeches. I thought this assignment was actually pretty amusing because we got the oppurtunity to choose the culture or co-culture we wanted to research and present, therefore it gave me the oppurtunity to find a culture I felt passionate about informing my peers on. I thought the speeches themselves were really great. Not only did I enjoy learning about the cultures everyone else chose to do, but I thought it was intereseting to see what little changes everyone put into their speeches, and the differances between these speeches and our first. Though there were not a lot of differances, there were a few, and some of the previous wall flowers in our class had opened up and I thought that was awesome. All in all I thought our last class was pretty cool, and I enjoyed it a lot.

Gran Torino

On Tuesday in class we watched Gran Torino. This movie was one of the best movies I've ever seen. I really didn't think that any movie with Clint Eastwood could be in the any least bit a movie with an actual meaning other than violence, or at least that was my way of thinking. After watching this movie about a man whose wife had just died. One could definatly say that this man was racist. He lived on a block with mostly Hmong people, an asian culture, in a town of a very diverse demographic. Throughout this movie he learns that being open to learning about differant peoples cultures is not a bad thing, and ends up making friends, and becoming a part of a whole other family. I believe this movie was incredibly powerful in the way that it protrays the fact that being open to learning about other people and their culture is a very good idea. This movie was amazing and left me not only entertained and informed, which in my eyes is the best thing a movie can do for a person.

Kanye and Taylor Swift

So, were aloud to write about anything that happens in class the previous week. So I'm going to write about the Kanye and Taylor Swift incidence at the VMA's. When we first started talking about it in class, I hadn't heard about it and I didn't know what had happened, so I went home and researched it. Well, I thought what Kanye did, going and hopping up on stage while Taylor Swift was giving her acceptance speech and announced that Beyonce had the all time best music video and hopped back off stage. Seriously, how rude could one person be? I did think it was rather sweet how Beyonce did later on after accepting her own award allow Taylor Swift to come back on stage to say her acceptance speech officially. So then Kanye went on Jay Leno and Leno asked him how he thought his mother, who had recently passed, would react to his out burst. Kanye started crying and what not. Though this was a rather low blow for Leno to use, I did think the whole episode Kanye put on, was a little over the top. Than, on top of all this publicity, I guess Obama was talking with a reporter, thinking their recorder was turned off, and the reporter asked Obama what he thought about the Kanye West incidence, Obama replied, he's a jackass, or something along those lines. He also said, I think I have some bigger things on my plate right now. I think this is simply hilarious. I just think that it's sad that something this stupid and unimportant makes the news, seriously isn't there more important issues in the news today?

Obama's Speech To Children

There has been tons of controversy over the idea of Obama speaking to children about their schooling. Many people thought that it would be a bad idea. When I heard about this, I didn't think that this speech could possibly be as bad as these negative thinkers were making it out to be. When my professor allowed us to watch this speech I loved what the president had to say and the way he was encouraging the students to stay in school. He tells the children that "everyone has something their good at" and "the future of America depends on you". He even stressed that the government is trying their hardest to give the students a great learning environment, which struck a cord with me, thinking that the government has a lot to do with the way our learning occurs. Obama stress's the need for an education to get good jobs in the future and gives example of school and real life such as "you could create the newest cancer vaccine but you won't know until you do your science homework". It rubbed me the wrong way when Obama said "You quit on your school you quit on your country", I could not tell you why that statement rubbed me the wrong way, but it did. He also said things along the line no one has written your own destiny, which is a big belief of mine. He also added that not every piece of homework is relevant but its needed to succeed which is something I struggled with when I was in school. He also said that you can't let your failures define you, and that if you fail, try try again, which is very good encouragement. He also said that America was built on people that worked hard, which was something that I needed to hear. One thing that he said that I didn't like was the fact that he mentioned kids look at football players and reality television stars and thinking that they won't have to go to school, he then added that you will probably never achieve such things, which I did not like considering the fact that he is telling the students they won't achieve something, and I did not like him saying that. All in all, there were more things in his speech that I liked than disliked, and I thought it was a very good, encouraging speech.

America's obsession with negativity.

Today in speech class, we had to present a speech on a momentous event in history that occured on the date of our birthday. I was not so amazed with the fact that most of the speeches had to do with a depressing and or negative event in history. For example, when searching for my topic for the speech, The great fire of London, I googled the date and saw several differant things that occured on my birth date, but the one event that caught my eye was a mass fire that spread across London in three days. Other speeches throughout class today followed suit. We had several speeches about earthquakes, and other such depressing things. I believe that our class had so many depressing events presented because America is obsessed with negative activity, as long as it does'nt occuer to them. I believe this is because American's are naturally curious beings, and a headline for a negative event will catch a persons attention much faster than a headline of something pleasant happening. I also believe that for some strange, almost sick reason, American's find the tragedy of others an incredibly interesting subject. I believe that America's obsession with negativity is sick, but as I stated before, only natural.