Cube with a blocked view.

Eeek!

Thursday I have to give my first toastmasters speech. First real one, not counting tabletopics. Which reminds me, Terry went and made me topic master for the next week. Just what I didn't need. Now I have to come up with questions for people to answer.

So last night I started to prepare my speech. It's an easy topic - me. But I have to talk for 4-6 minutes. At first I thought that would be easy. I can talk. But...I'm the only one talking. With a dozen or so pairs of eyes watching me. I'm really not the most interesting person in the world, and I can't imagine anyone wants to hear me talk for 4-6 minutes about curling.

I start preparing my speech and I go with family, education and work history. I'm still a little concerned at this point that I'm going to have trouble talking for 4-6 minutes. Then I run through the speech the first time. I peek at the clock when I finish talking about university and... eep, I'm already at 6 minutes. Time to go back and prune some.

Finally at 11 pm, I ran through it one last time. Still at 7 minutes. I figure I'll leave it there and trim up my work stuff if I end up cutting things close. I'd hate to get in there, talk at hyper speed and be done in 3 minutes flat. Or forget parts and end up short with nothing to say. Although I can babble forever about building ambulance software. So I should be good there.

If all else fails I'll tell some story about my nephew. I dunno. Or I'll pull out the curling card.

posted by Erin @ 12:45 PM