My relationship with public speaking has always had many ups and downs. So, to fulfill my aesthetic expressions pillar, I decided to take this course in hopes that I could overcome some of my fears of public speaking. I am glad to say that while my nerves are never fully calm when public speaking or presenting, I have a much better time dealing with them now.
To start, my professor had our class do multiple icebreakers to create a comfortable environment. While I realize this cannot always be the case when presenting, it definitely helped before I learned other tools and strategies. Then it was all about practice. Our assignments were different types of speeches ranging from all about me to demonstrative to persuasive and others in between, as well as in lengths and amount of time to prepare. I actually found that I was most calm presenting during the improv exercise we did in class. Unfortunately, this class had to finish online, and I found that I was much more comfortable presenting in person and less so recording myself alone. This was strange to me because I would have expected the opposite.
However, no matter how long the speech had to be, what it was about, how much time I had to prepare, or where I delivered the speech, there was one strategy that always helped. This strategy I used was to create an outline, like the one below, and then have one or two note cards with the outline and a few notes to aid during my presentation.