Brainstorming:

Connecting with the audience: In order to make the audience feel connected to my experience, I could use tactics such as telling a personal story or a funny anecdote to start off and gather their attention. Since I enjoy humor, My speech may have a satirical tone. This also is a good opportunity to look at the shortcomings of myself as a student and academia as a whole. I would focus on the balance of school/work/social life as well as how to manage bad habits. I will also attempt to deduce how others manage to stay on top of academics so well, and hopefully come to a personal conclusion as to how I can improve myself. 

Topic Selection: I chose to write about how to better myself academically for a few reasons. First of all, I don’t have much of a professional life outside of a job, but my job is one of the most unprofessional places on the planet. As for the other prompt, I made the decision to communicate as little as possible during covid, so I have very little to say about that. The only thing left that I can connect to is school. I have always been a terrible student, and sitting in a classroom doing discussion questions for hours a day makes me want to walk into the wilderness and never come back to society. I think academia has glaring structural issues, but I recognize its importance and wish to find a way to navigate it since I chose to be here. I am hoping this speech will help me flesh out issues with my work ethic and help me make some sense of my last year here in a way that is helpful to others as well.   

Outline:

I might start with a sort of flashback story to demonstrate that I have always struggled to keep up with school work. I will also go over the reasons why I was convinced I did not have time for school and did the bare minimum for a decent grade. Moving on, I’ll discuss bad habits that have kept me from doing my best and possible ways to mitigate them. From there I’ll speak about how the academic system is a bunch of hoops we agree to jump through, and how some people are good at jumping and some are not. I’d like to conclude with more honesty about my shortcomings, and that a change of mindset, as well as setting goals, can make a big difference in your academic outcome.

Draft 1:

How to better my academic self:

The more I have observed and participated in academic life, the more I realize that intelligence is very overrated. Modern education is vastly diverse, and there are opportunities for people of all types of intelligence to be part of the academic system. Academia itself seems to be little more than a series of hoops to jump through, where the result is a piece of paper saying your brain is worth something to society. Despite putting myself in this situation, I can’t help but feel resentful of it all. But the key to success lies within all of our reaches. Success in the modern classroom can be broken down into just a few important attributes. 

First, you have to realize that intelligence is a fixed trait, with much of the research pointing to the fact that if a student believes he/she can become smarter, they will. In short, intelligence is a trait you can develop over time. What’s important is to adopt this mindset and tailor your actions to becoming a smarter version of yourself. The second way to improve your academics is a classic; stay organized! College is the perfect environment to learn how to successfully multitask, and the mountain of time-consuming busy work each class gives you is an opportunity for improvement. Even if the work isn’t useful to you, learning to juggle multiple tasks will prepare you for the rigors of college and professional life. Organization can take many forms, but some important ones include taking coherent notes, keeping up on a planner or calendar, and saving classwork, tests, homework, etc. so that you can use them to study at a later date. Another winning strategy is to not overwork yourself. It may seem that sometimes we have to spend hours at a time doing homework until we drive ourselves crazy, but with proper planning, you can have much more productive uses of your time. Experts say to work in short blocks of time, only around an hour before taking a small break and continuing. This helps you maintain concentration and memory retention. Another thing to keep in mind if you’re trying to create productive days is to exercise regularly. Even though it may not seem that important for academics, exercising around 30 minutes, 4 times a week improves concentration, creativity, and memory, all of which will help you become a better version of your academic self. 

There must be a million ways to improve yourself and your academics, and all of this information is readily made available online by people far more organized than me. What is truly important is the ability to change and reason with yourself. Listening to speeches and reading about study tips is good information, but the only person who can help you is you… The key to navigating through this is to simply build good habits. Even though it is not complicated to do, I would venture to guess everyone has struggled with this throughout their life. Whether it’s remembering to make your bed in the morning or making study binders, gradually building more and more good habits is the essential skill you need to succeed in school. From good habits come good studying, then comes good multitasking, and then you are on your way to breezing through even the hardest of classes.

Draft 2

How to better my academic self:

The more I have observed and participated in academic life, the more I realize that intelligence is very overrated. Modern education is vastly diverse, and there are opportunities for all types of people to be part of the academic system. So why do some people struggle more than others? I think it’s because we tend to alienate ourselves from our work. Oftentimes, people (myself included) are quick to poke holes in the system. We ask questions like; Are mundane discussion questions every week really the best way to educate us? Why do I have to write a blog? Hasn’t blogging been dead since 2009?  And while it’s easy to make fun of the system, the fact is that we put ourselves here, and turning a cold shoulder towards your work only leaves you with more of it to do. So what’s the secret to a 4.0 GPA? I wouldn’t know, but there are little things we can do to help us feel connected to our work. What’s important to know is that the key to success lies within our reach. Being prosperous in the modern classroom is a matter of self-discipline. A high IQ is useless if you can’t organize your notes and turn in your assignments on time. So how can we better ourselves academically?

First, you have to realize that intelligence is not a fixed trait, with much of the research pointing to the fact that if a student believes he/she can become smarter, they will do better. In short, intelligence is a trait that can possibly develop over time. It’s important to adopt this mindset and tailor your actions to becoming a smarter version of yourself. Even if you have to manufacture your excitement, a different outlook can change everything. The second way to improve your academics is a classic; stay organized! College is the perfect environment to learn how to successfully multitask, and every pile of busy work on the table is an opportunity for improvement. Even if the work isn’t useful to you, learning to juggle multiple tasks, subjects, and educational mediums will prepare you for the rigors of college and professional life. Organization can take many forms, but some important ones include taking coherent notes, keeping up on a planner or calendar, and saving classwork, tests, homework, etc. so that you can use them to study at a later date. You probably know all of this by now, but how many of us can actually we’ve done all of these things consistantly? There is always room for improvement. Another winning strategy is to not overwork yourself. It may seem that sometimes we have to spend hours at a time doing homework until we drive ourselves crazy, but with proper planning, you can have much more productive uses of your time. I promise you aren’t a healthy student if you take pride in doing 8 hours of homework in a row. Experts say to work in short blocks of time, only around an hour before taking a small break and continuing. This helps you maintain concentration and memory retention. Another thing to keep in mind if you’re trying to create productive days is to exercise regularly. Even though it may not seem that important for academics, exercising around 30 minutes, 4 times a week improves concentration, creativity, and memory, all of which will help you become a better version of your academic self. 

There must be a million ways to improve yourself and your academics, and all of this information is readily made available online by people far more organized than me. What is truly important is the ability to change and reason with yourself by not looking at the system, but looking intrinsically. Listening to speeches and reading about study tips is good information, but the only person who can help you is you… The key to navigating through this is to simply build good habits. Though it is not a complicated idea, I would venture to guess everyone has struggled with this sometime throughout their life. Whether it’s remembering to make your bed in the morning or making study binders, gradually building more and more good habits is the essential skill you need to succeed in school AND in life. From good habits come good studying, then comes good multitasking, and then you are on your way to breezing through even the hardest of classes.

Script:

Slide 1

  • Intelligence is overrated
  • Modern education is diverse, includes many opportunities
  • Why do we struggle? We alienate ourselves from our work
  • Quick to poke holes in the system, ask questions

Slide 2

  • We chose to be here, and we have to manufacture excitement
  • What’s the secret? I don’t know
  •  Self-discipline makes you prosperous 
  • High IQ is useless without basic organizational skills
  • How can we better ourselves?

Slide 3

  • 1. Intelligence is not a fixed trait
  • Research points to self-motivation/development over time
  • It’s important to adopt this mindset

Slide 4

  • 2. Stay organized
  • College is good to learn to multitask/ plan ahead
  • Take notes, save tests, homework, etc for later
  • How many of us can say we’ve done these things?

Slide 5

  • 3. Don’t overwork yourself
  • Experts say to only work for an hour at a time
  • Helps with concentration and memory retention

Slide 6

  • 4. Exercise regularly
  • 30 minutes, 4 times a week helps creativity, memory, concentration

Slide 7

  • There are many ways to improve yourself
  • This information is ready and online 
  • What’s important is to look intrinsically

Slide 8

  • The only person who can change you is YOU
  • Again: Build good habits
  • Everyone has probably struggled with this in childhood
  • Even making your bed in the morning helps
  • Good habits make good studying, which makes 

classroom performance better

Peer Review Experience

I did not get to peer review and film myself with the class, but I did meet with Lysle. She gave me two good pieces of advice. First, she said to include more personal anecdotes. She also reminded me to do a visual representation, which I completely forgot about.

Peer Review Reflection e dry humor and 2. that my writing isn’t coherent. But Lysle gave me a very good response. She didn’t have much to say about the content, but she did suggest that I include more personal anecdotes. Since I’m not much of a sharer I wasn’t sure how to successfully do this, but I think I ended with a good balance when I delivered my speech. She also convinced me to make a bulleted list of points to read off of for my speech instead of my original plan to read over it until it’s semi-memorized and then wing it. Most importantly, Lysle reminded me that I needed a visual aid for my speech, so I thank her for that.

Peer Review Reflection

with her two days before I delivered my speech, and I was nervous because I did not have a peer review session or class time to observe my classmates. Going into it blind and having to read my speech to Lysle in the Winward public study area was less than optimal for preparation, but her response made me feel better. Since my speech had both serious and humorous elements, I wasn’t sure if the tone of the speech was any good, and I always believe that 1. people won’t pick up on my strange dry humor and 2. that my writing isn’t coherent. But Lysle gave me a very good response. She didn’t have much to say about the content, but she did suggest that I include more personal anecdotes. Since I’m not much of a sharer I wasn’t sure how to successfully do this, but I think I ended with a good balance when I delivered my speech. She also convinced me to make a bulleted list of points to read off of for my speech instead of my original plan to read over it until it’s semi-memorized and then wing it. Most importantly, Lysle reminded me that I needed a visual aid for my speech, so I thank her for that.

Reflection of Project

As far as school projects go, this one was reasonable for me. Even though I don’t like it, I recognize the importance of learning how to speak publically. I liked how we were given a few options, and the options were vague enough where we had the opportunity to create something completely unique. The prompts individually were honestly very disinteresting, but as I began to outline what I was going to say, I became more interested. It was unfortunate that so many people did the same speech and said similar things, but everyone delivered the information uniquely, so listening to all of the speeches was entertaining. It was also unfortunate that I didn’t get to peer review, but my experience with peer review hasn’t been very useful in the past because I don’t trust my classmates’ honesty, so I don’t feel that missing it was very detrimental to me. If I was to do this again, I would definitely work harder to deliver my speech the way I plan to, because, in both this project and past ones, there’s a great disparity between the way I want to deliver it and the way it is delivered. I also have a bad habit of completely changing the style and content of my speech right before I deliver it, so I did my best to mitigate that. When all was said and done, I felt this project was good practice for public speaking. I’m glad the class is small and full of personable and entertaining people because this would not have been as fun if it was a large class of students (more) on edge.