You Are What You Believe Yourself to Be

Throughout this past week in ISM, I wrote my new introduction speech and began researching contacts to add to my new contact log. Writing a completely original introduction speech was quite difficult because I had to make sure that all of my ideas and thoughts that I included in my speech were valuable and enhanced the overall message I was attempting to convey to my audience. Not only that, but this would be the first impression of myself that I give my audience.

Speeches and I do not get along. Some rare moments of my life have consisted of me being confident while giving a speech, prior preparation and multiple practices. Other times have not blessed me as much, throwing me into the same arena as most other people: a fear of public-speaking. I am also extremely afraid of failure, so that is an unfortunate combination of characteristics. However, with a decent amount of personal improvement and a gradual boost of self-confidence, I have learned that there is nothing to actually fear.

Onto the informational aspect of this speech, I wanted to utilize a distinct approach rather than go off of the ideas I dispersed throughout my speech last year. Since this is my second year in the ISM program, I desired to create a speech that would showcase specific opportunities and observations which I wanted to experience. Within the scholarly and character realm, I have definitely grown and improved in terms of what is significant information and what is not as valuable to the audience and myself. Thus, I included more pediatric-related items rather than blabbering on about myself because that is established knowledge that I can include throughout my presentation.

In conclusion, the introduction speech opened my mind up to some contrasting perspectives and routes that I might have previously taken but opted to go another way. Giving the audience a sense of relatability can be accomplished without completely throwing away the informative aspect of a presentation.