Saturday, February 03, 2007

ToastMasters

I am into the fourth week of a 8 week course called SpeechCraft. The course is designed and run by ToastMasters. ToastMasters is a great place to learn or to hone your public speaking and leadership skills.

This course scares the heck out of me...which is why I am writing about it. I am in a group of 12 other people from my workplace. Once a week, for two hours, we shit bricks together.

There are "table topics," which are random questions asked and you have to answer them on the fly and make your speech on your topic cogent and about one minute long. Then you are evaluated on your talk....not the content so much as just your presentation on the topic.

The other half of each day involves a prepared speech. Last week I spoke about how cruel I think zoos are, and this week, I am speaking on Darfur and the appaling lack of international reaction to this tragedy.

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