Public Speaking

For me personally, public speaking is slightly nerve wracking. Although I don't particularly enjoy making speeches, I have had several occasions to do so in the past. In high school, I was very actively involved in the Special Olympics team in my area and also served on the state youth activation committee for Special Olympics Delaware. As a member of this committee, I helped to organize statewide conferences for high school students to learn how their schools can become more involved in Special Olympics and Project Unify (which is a movement to get people with and without intellectual disabilities working together). During this conference, members of the committee would run workshops that focussed on different aspects of the organization, and I usually would give the talk on the Polar Bear Plunge, which is Special Olympics Delaware's biggest annual fundraiser. I've also given talks at my high school and other youth leadership conferences on the Spread the Word to End the Word campaign.

I think that one strength I have in the area of public speaking is that I have done it before, although in the past I think I have felt more comfortable with delivering these speeches because they have been on topics that I am very familiar with and can speak a little more casually about. I also feel that these situations have had less pressure than delivering a speech for a class to be graded. Another strength that I think I have is that I am usually pretty good at memorizing parts of my speech so I don't have to rely on notecards too heavily.

As for weaknesses in my public speaking ability, I think that I really need to work on not using verbal fillers. It's a bad habit that I rely on heavily in my daily, casual speech and it's one that I've yet to break. However, I realize how unprofessional and distracting this may seem to an audience when delivering a speech and I hope to improve in this area. I also think that I need to work on maintaining eye contact. I'm a fairly awkward person and it just feels kind of unnatural and weird to lock eyes with various people in the audience, but I'm going to work at getting better at this aspect of public speaking as well.

Paradigm Shifts

A paradigm shift is defined as a fundamental change in approach or underlying assumptions. In today's society, our philosophy and views of certain standards have obviously undergone many changes under the years. The following are two examples of paradigm shifts that have recently occurred within our culture.

1. Standards of Beauty for Women

The standards of beauty that re determined by society have changed drastically over the years. The ideal body for women is more unattainable than ever, and most of this is accounted for by the rise of photoshop. In the 1950s, Marilyn Monroe was one of the most iconic sex symbols in the world.

In the media today, you're more likely to see someone who looks like Megan Fox portrayed as having an ideal body type.

In the 1950s, it was not uncommon to see advertisements of ways for women to gain weight. Society saw a fuller figure as more desirable and encouraged women to strive for that ideal. In today's culture, you would be more likely to see advertisements encouraging women to lose weight. This paradigm shift has resulted in lower self-esteem in women because of their inability to reach the unattainable standards set in place by society.

2. Gay Marriage

Gay marriage is another paradigm shift that is relevant in today's society. With the legislation that was just passed making gay marriage legal in all fifty states of America, we have made some huge progress in being accepting of people from all walks of life. The old paradigm that stigmatized our perception of gay people was that they were immoral in a religious sense or that their love was somehow wrong or destructive of the traditional values that our culture has held on to for so long. However, what we are now beginning to realize is that gender does not determine someone's right to love another, so it should also not determine someone's right to get married.

Timing is Everything

If you had asked me a few weeks ago what kairos was, I would have had no idea. The truth is, I had never heard of this rhetorical strategy before learning about it in class. Of course I had learned the basics about ethos, pathos, and logos in high school, but in my opinion, kairos might be the most important rhetorical appeal strategy out of all of them.

Simply put, kairos is saying (or writing) something at the right time. It's utilizing your "window" of opportunity to make something relevant to your audience based on the context of what's going on around you. If what your writing doesn't seem relevant to the people who will be reading it, they most likely won't even try. This is why I think that kairos is the most important rhetorical strategy; ethos, pathos, and logos are important elements to consider when making a rhetorical appeal, but if your work does not appear to be relevant or important to your audience, they won't bother reading it at all.

One specific example that comes to mind when talking about kairos is the response of President George W. Bush following the terrorist attacks on 9/11. That night, President Bush appeared on live television to deliver this message.



This address was exactly what the American public needed to hear at this time and subsequently was a huge factor in uniting Americans all over the country. Bush used the senseless tragedies of 9/11 as a platform to strengthen the country's moral and patriotism, something that he would not have been able to achieve without the proper timing.

Rhetorical analysis of any kind usually begins with some reference to kairos; understanding the context in which something was written/created plays a large role in understanding the importance of the piece as a whole. Appeals to kairos attempt to make use of the particular moment in order to capture what will be appealing, relevant, and engaging for the intended audience. Effective uses of kairos take advantage of a particular situation or time in order to add a sense of importance and immediacy to the work.

Something to Blog About

I give bloggers a lot of credit.

They are somehow able to make finding a creative and interesting topic to write about look easy. They are able to communicate with their audiences in a clear and unique voice that allows them to come across as personable and relatable. And finally, something that I am perhaps the most jealous of, they are able to effortlessly format their blogs and beautifully customize them down to the very last, minute detail.

I spent a long time thinking about ways that I could achieve these three elements of successful blogging (or at least the first two anyway). My topic would have to be something that I am not only passionate about, but also something that I could continue finding new ways to talk about in order to keep posting for the rest of the semester. I thought about all of the things I am passionate about and nothing really struck me as something that would be interesting enough to write about, much less for my audience to read about. I wanted my topic to be something relatable enough to really grab people, and that's when it hit me:

I'll blog about Friends.



Because what's more relatable to college kids than a show about young people just trying to make it in the world? Friends is one of the most iconic and loved television shows of all time. Besides all of the quirky jokes, clever one-liners, and and witty comebacks, I think there are many life lessons to be learned from Friends, and that's really what I want to explore in my blog. What I'll be doing is analyzing one episode of each season over ten blog posts and discussing the message and lessons to be learned from each one. I've been a huge fan of the show for about six years now, and these six friends have taught me a lifetime of lessons within ten short seasons.