Public speaking anxiety

I know I said in the previous post no more post until Monday but I had to get this one in.
Yesterday I had to give my first speech in communications and I have never been so nervous in my life it was the weirdest thing. I am pretty comfortable speaking in front of people because at my last place of employment I would give presentations to a crowd that averaged about fifty people and I was told I was pretty good at it.

In the previous post I layed out what the assignment was about and i'm not going to go back over that again. The prof. went by alphabetical order which meant that I would be last, there is no way in the world that I was going to sit there for ninety minutes, so I volunteered to go second and I ended up going fifth. As soon as I got up in front the class my hands started shaking, my legs were shaking, my palms were sweaty, my heart started beating scarily too fast it didn't feel good at all and then I began the speech and ended the speech without passing out. "Thank you my Lord and savior." Needless to say all of that was worth it because I got an "A" and now it's time to get to turn in my three page profile piece for English.




Until next time.......................

No power

Yesterday I got off to a rough start due to a poweroutage that lasted 17 hours, my power company owes me a 17 hr credit and believe me they will pay. The only class I had yesterday was Logic and we got our first quiz back and I got a 75% which is better than I thought I would do. The crazy things is after looking over the quiz I noticed that if I had read the questions just one more time I could have scored at least 90%.......but hey that's a lesson learned.

Today I have communications and I have to do something called oral interpretation. I have to read a section of a childrens book and interpret the different characters voices and feelings and put an emphasis on energy and enthusiasm without loosing the context of the main subject. The book I chose was from the movie "Cars" in this book the main character is Mater and if you know anything about Mater, doing his voice is going to be a challenge but that's why I chose this book. No more post until Monday.



Until next time.........................

Conditional

I'm sorry i'm a day late and I have no excuses except my day started at 6am and I didn't sit down until 11pm at which point I fell asleep. I woke up this morning at 6am and it's now 10:50 am and this is the first time I have a had chance to do anything other than get the kids off to school, eat, read and write for Logic class. Yesterday I had english comp. and Logic. In english we had to do a self edit on our first rough draft on the profile piece that we are doing and I got off to a slow start but after that I realized I just about edited out about 2 pages. I now have to come up with 2 more pages of content to get to the 5 pages that was my goal for this profile piece, I probably won't make it to 5 but i'll settle for no less than 3 if I make it to 4 i'll be very happy with that.

My Logic class started off with a quiz (yippee-skippy) I looked at the first question and read it about three times before I realized that i'm making this harder than it has to be which I do a lot. The concept of Logic is expressing the english language with symbols. The hardest part about that is the english has too much ambiguity and Logic focuses on the absolute truth leaving no implied meaning or speculation as to what the statement is saying. The english language seems like it's mostly comprised of ambiguity and when you try to turn a statement full of implied or speculation content into an absolute truth it gets difficult......but not impossible.




Until next time.............................

Communications

Today was a day of discipline as is everyday if you care about what you are doing. I didn't have to be in class until the middle of the day so that allowed me to get some reading done for eng. comp. and to continue to try to understand the language of intro. to logic. I decided to go the student lounge and work on some exercises for the logic class and try to get ahead of the upcoming quiz for that class.

My life as it is now seems like I have a lot of time for anything but no time for everything, which is where the discipline comes into play. While waiting for the "communications" class to begin, I had a conversation with one of my classmates, a guy who is around 20 and is weighing the option of joining the military to continue his goal of becoming a doctor or continuing the conventional educational model. As a former Marine I obviously tried to make the case for joining the military and pursuing his goal that way. He listened and had good questions, I think whatever path he chooses would probably be a good one.

Communications class was fun for me today, I can't say the same for my classmates because of all of the pseudo-complaining. My approach is if you have to do something take it serious and have fun. The "communications" class is in the early stage of trying to get everyone comfortable with the feeling of being uncomfortable; standing in front of thirty people and speaking in a manner that most of us don't use in our everyday life. The lesson for today is: I learned and that is one of my goals everyday, at the end of my day if I can answer the question: What did you learn today? then it was good day.

Until next time........................

Symbolization

Today was a very intense day, as I stated in the previous post I am getting ready to write my first essay in over 13 years, it's going to be a profile piece on my mother and I had to show progress by turning in my scratch outline, freewriting and concept mapping to the professor. Since I wasn't clear on how she wanted it ( I wrote it with a real ink pen) because I am going to use it in the content of the essay I scanned it and e-mailed it to her.......and that's that.

~(A&L)&(AvL). Does this mean anything to you? Probably not, about 8 days ago it didn't mean anything to me either, today this represents a statement that says: Andy and Luc will not both stay at the party but one of them will. This is why I think intro. to logic is my most interesting course so far. Tomorrow is a new day and a new challenge


Until next time.......................

Back to school after 13 years.

The purpose of this blog is to document the challenges associated with a 37 year old man with three children and a spouse continuing his education after a 13 year hiatus. Throughout this blog you will notice that some of my grammer and spelling will be let's just say bad, but hopefully you pay attention to the intent and the overall message that I am trying to send. Some days will be better than others but all will be an insight on the daily challenges of college life from an older point of view.


Today is 9-14-2010 I started school on 9-7-2010 the same day my children went back to school. The very first challenge I encountered was getting my kids back into the routine, it wasn't a problem for me because I am a former marine so.......6 o'clock whatever. The morning of 9-7-2010 my 7 year old (hence forth will be known as b-male) "daddy it's too early can I go back to sleep i'm sleepy? My response:" No you should have went to sleep when I told you to got sleep lets get going". My 12 year old (hence-forth known as b-female) "daddy i'm scared about going to 8th grade". My response: "thats normal that means you are ready for a new challenge".

I am taking 3 classes, (1) intro to logic (2) communications-131 and (3) english composition 101, so far introduction to logic is my favorite class because during the first week everything looked like greek (which I have no clue about) now somethings look like spanish (which I have a small clue about). I am currently working on my first essay for eng. comp. which will be 3-5 pages long and I will let you know how that's coming along.


Until next time.....................