Mastering Toast

I decided long ago that the best toast was on the light side, with a minimal browning and warm enough to melt the peanut butter on top of it smooth. I've even branched out to english muffins. I think I've mastered that kind of toast.

The other kind of toast - the public speaking kind - is beyond me. When a Toastmasters group started up at work, I was intrigued. It was scheduled to meet during lunch once a week and very conveniently accessible. I posted a Facebook status indicating that I was interested but intimidated and every single post in response was in favor. I rarely see that kind of unanimity especially on the internet. In honor of such an anomaly, I signed up as a charter member.

Thus begins a tale of heart-pounding anxiety, near death experiences and a lot of words. Spoken out loud. In front of people. People with laser-death-gazes. Why does anyone do this sort of thing?

Actually, I joined back in October and in light of the fact that I haven't actually perished from publicly speaking, I can report that it's okay.

For those unfamiliar with the format of a Toastmasters meeting, here's a brief runthrough. Most meeting roles are filled by the members of the club from the toastmaster, the table topics master, speech evaluators, timer, 'ah' counter, jokemaster, etc. The toastmaster plays emcee for the meeting, introducing the agenda and the various speakers throughout. The timer, armed with a stopwatch and red, yellow and green cards, times each speech and table topic speaker and lets the speaker know when they've spoken long enough. The 'ah' counter keeps track of how many verbal fillers such as 'um', 'ah', 'er' the speakers utter. There are two prepared speeches and two evaluators to give them public feedback. The aforementioned table topics are open-ended questions or topics that members or guests can speak about for 1-2 minutes. Table topic questions are meant to train extemporaneous speaking. The entire meeting is meant to give as many people as possible the opportunity to practice getting in front of a supportive group and speaking.

To motivate people to volunteer for the roles and speeches, members are provided a speech curriculum and a leadership curriculum. The speech curriculum provides assignment speeches that each focus on a particular speech-making skill. The leadership curriculum provides assignments to take on various Toastmaster meeting and club roles. I assume completing each set of assignments earns you accolades, parades, a feast and maybe a certificate. I'll let you know when I get one.

As of this writing, I have given three speeches in the Competent Communicator curriculum. I've completed a number of the meeting roles and I try to volunteer for a table topic talk whenever I show up to the meeting and don't have a role. I've signed up for a speech contest next week and I've committed to completing my 10 speeches by the end of June.

There are a couple of interesting things I've learned:
-I learned that I speak pretty quietly. Actually I lied. I know that already. People tell me that all the time. I still don't believe them because I can hear myself just fine.
-I learned that I can memorize the gist of a 5-7 minute speech just fine. It's the individual words that I sometimes draw a blank on.
-It's very difficult to get rid of all the verbal fillers. Replacing the fillers with silence makes for a randomly dramatic sentence.
-In order to perform a speech, I have to write it. Which is nice for making me write about a random selection of topics.
-The more nervous I am, the faster the speech goes. For instance, telling the speech to my car as I drive might take 10 minutes. Practicing it in front of Lee may take 7 minutes. The actual speech? 5 minutes.
-Talking for longer than a minute on an impromptu topic seems like an eternity. Talking for less than 7 minutes on a prepared topic seems really short.

I'm sure there'll be more things to learn as I go on. Stay tuned for the next episode of death defying speechifying.