Blog 14- Independent Component 1

LITERAL:

(A) I, Marissa Jasso, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 33 hours of work.

(B)

• My main source of reference was a textbook bought online from ValoreBooks.com called "The Public Speaking Handbook", 4th edition by Steven & Susan Beebe. Cited in MLA format is: Beebe, Steven A., and Susan J. Beebe. The Public Speaking Handbook. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2005. Print.  I used this book every single class period and this is not including all of the hours spent using it to help me construct speeches, study for midterms, quizzes, finals and complete assignments.
  
  
• This particular website was mentioned to us by our class instructor. It discusses the fear of public speaking, but it also has numerous links to other phobias and the point of going on the website is to realize that some of the other phobias are way worse that public speaking. Oddly enough, the website actually worked...There IS Something Worse.
• On the first day of class, our homework was to go online, find, print out and return read and in hand an article called 5 Reasons Everyone Should Take A Public Speaking Course. In fact, our first lecture was based off of this article as well as our class analysis of that piece for that day. I would have to mention it as a pretty valuable source not only to the class, but to my senior project.

(C) My hours for this whole component are updated on the upper right hand corner of my blog.

(D) What did I do? Before I explain what I did, I feel it is best to explain my reasoning behind why I did what I did, so that hopefully you will see the strategy behind my actions.

Because my senior project is not just regarding immigration law, but rather more customer service, I found it best to find a class to better suit my desired needs at this point in my project. So far I have done a lot of my research on immigration law, and I feel like I am getting a great grasp on the politics behind law, on the specific services our law firm provides and on the cutting edge thinking needed to survive in the law office and court trials, but one thing I feel I am struggling with the most are the clients. I can study books for hours on types of law and regulation and rules for addressing certain cases, because they are memorable facts that can be obtained and regurgitated. Working with people coming from all different parts of the world, and finding the strength to appeal to each one without looking too shy or too forward is a challenge for me. Coming to International Polytechnic High School for all four years, you would think I would have learned how to speak in front of crowds, but yet every time a new customer walks in the door, those butterflies in my stomach (more like a zoo) never seem to disappear. I not only wanted to find a way for this independent component to benefit myself, but also to help others. I wanted to find a way to get my point across in a more simplistic manner. I found that when speaking to people my nervousness would compound upon my being flustered and somehow my words would get lost in translation. As much as I tried to simplify what I was saying or get to the point faster, sometimes the things I said would just not get through and the client would stand there staring at me in utter confusion. I needed guidance from somebody with experience in this field, someone with the expertise to give me more than just simple tips and fun facts on how you stay calm. With this in mind, I found a public speaking class at Citrus Community College. For my independent component one, I completed a series of essays written to accompany my many speeches which was the basis of the class throughout the course of 10 weeks.

I took a public speaking class called "Public Address 101."  I had not only had to sit through 33 hours of lecture (not that I am complaining about it...I had the greatest professor in all the land), but I had to read the required texts accompanied by the lecture which was a book previously mentioned called "The Public Speaking Handbook" which by the way is no "handbook" at all, it's huge. We had to read a total of 450 pages throughout the the course which was broken down into 7 parts- Audience Centered Speaking Process, Analyzing an Audience, Preparing Statements, Crafting a Speech, Delivering a Speech, Types of Speeches and Appendixes. The 7 parts were divided up into 18 chapters, each with a minimum of 3 subsections and a maximum of 7. The chapters were oddly enough still required to be read, though usually in no way tied in with our lecture topics until weeks later. The professors timing was off because she had an older version of the book that she insisted on keeping to teach from even though she informed her students (myself included) to buy the 4th edition because she had briefly reviewed it and found it contained more relevant information.

Throughout the class, we were assigned to have many speeches, but just 10 weeks of speaking in front of strangers wasn't going to be enough to cure our stage fright or make us good speakers- We had to learn. This is the reason our professor insisted on lecturing for a good amount of time instead of forcing us to present on random things constantly. We had set speeches, each with a date and specific type of speech we were assigned to construct and preform. We had midterms and finals just as any other General Education class and this was all mentioned to us the first day as well as on the syllabus so people knew what they were getting into, as did I, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

Speeches and Outlines:

 Throughout the course of the class I had to prepare and recite many speeches. I had to create a personal experience speech, an informative speech, an informative outline, a persuasive speech, persuasive outline, a refutative speech, a final speech and a final outline. In addition we also had our midterm, our final and our impromptu speeches in which we were expected to come up with random topics to speak upon three times throughout the course. Our outlines were research based, written in MLA format and all required particular numbers of sources regarding the topic of the speech.

INTERPRETIVE:

I was lucky enough to have an instructor who allowed us to take notes on our laptops. During every lecture, I would take notes on a Word Document. In addition, I also saved the speeches/outlines that I wrote and submitted. What better evidence than the documents themselves?

Because I cannot upload Word Documents directly from my computer onto Blogger, and I do not know how to embed, I had to get creative. I have screen shotted two of my most popularly well received essays in which you may read as pictures!

Here is my Informative Speech written on the Injustices of the College Application System.  I realized that I needed to find a topic that I could speak about knowledgeably and formally, but something that could also be relevant to what I am going through with my mentorship and with my life, which is how I came up with College Application System Injustices. While writing version after version of the speech I came to realize my most natural way of formally speaking. I found a comfortable middle ground between professionalism and my most relaxed state of being and while rehearsing consistently in front of family and friends I found that I had a confidence within me that I most likely wouldn't have stumbled upon any other way than my practicing as I had.

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Here is my Persuasive Speech/Outline written on the correlation between Vegetarianism and Heart Disease.  When choosing a topic for my persuasive speech, the instructor said to write about something that I happen to have a passion for, so I chose vegetarianism. Although this topic has nothing to do with my senior project, learning how to speak in front of a classroom full of strangers definitely helped my anxiety level when I had to go back to the office and speak in front of just one stranger.

Persuasion helps me during my mentorship. Learning how to persuade people is definitely an art I have not yet mastered, but it is needed in everyday in the workplace environment to talk to clients.  Persuasion is needed with clients every day to ensure that they either will be persuaded to hire us on their behalf, or be persuaded to pay a higher price, or even just pay in total, clients need to be swung onto our side and for that to happen it is imperative I speak authoritatively and convincingly. I had to write multiple drafts of this one outline for my speech, editing phrases and words to make it more convincing. This is the same thing my mentor does when writing briefs or submitting documents to people in charge of their clients future. Law is a hard set strictly bound piece of wire, but if I've learned anything through mentorship and all of my efforts in the class of persuasion, it's that sometimes wires need to be bent...

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Although the class was only 33 hours, that does not mean I spent only 33 hours working on this component. I spent hours writing and editing all of my speeches, rehearsing, memorizing facts flashcard by flashcard for specific speeches, brainstorming topics and even meeting with my newly made colleagues to study for the final which included a final speech and a final written exam.

APPLIED:

This component really helped me get a better grasp on my senior project. In fact I believe this component is AE worthy, this is why:

I didn't just continue my mentorship and work extra long hours, I continued my mentorship while taking this class, I analyzed the my project to find the holes that need improvement, isolated my problem and found a practical, successful solution. Public speaking has always been a challenge for me even at iPoly, but simply acknowledging the problem is not the answer. I found my own solution by finding and taking this class because I knew it would best suit my needs in the workplace. I have never been more confident while speaking to clients and after many impromptus, I'm comfortable being put on the spot with almost nothing to go on. Learning how to create everything from nothing, was a topic I was unfamiliar with. Confidence must be acquired over time and I'm not trying to say that after one class I am a some type of speaking wizard...but it is through this class that I have acquired the techniques to further enhance my speaking and writing abilities.

For example, in one of the lectures my instructor covered the topic of the communication cycle. Here were part of my notes from taken from that lecture.

One thing I found most important from that one lecture to my senior project was just how little I really knew communicating. I suppose because I am a girl I always assumed I was some kind of master at it, and that communicating my feelings, emotion, thought and expression was always very reflective of myself. I never truly thought of the larger picture which is that no matter who I am talking to, there is an audience. Speaking is an audience centered art which means that if I want to be listened to and actually understood, my speaking needs to be molded and developed into whoever my audience may be. This one little fact has made all the difference in my speaking at my mentorship. I no longer speak to clients as simply "Marissa", but depending to who I am speaking with I could be "Marissa the Friendly," "Marissa the Serious," "Marissa the Heartfelt," "Marissa the MAN"...I need to be able to act as a chameleon in every type of situation which is something I got to experience in my speaking class while portraying a formal speaker one day, a persuasive speaker the next, a Pro Stem Cell advocate one day and an Anti Science speaker the next. Taking on different rolls is something I found that I not only needed to learn, but once I did learn, I realized I was actually quite good at.

I completed that transferable class of 3 Units with a sold "A." I am extremely proud of my dedication to the class, the students, the speeches and most importantly myself. Public speaking is the #1 fear of all Americans, even death comes in as #2. I proved myself to be not so typical in the way that I'm no longer afraid anymore! I take pride in saying I've turned my worst fear, into my biggest asset. I only hope this is reflected in my blog.