Tonight's meeting was very different from the past Toastmasters meeting I have been to, but in a very good way. Our club hosted the Lions Club High School Speech Contest and the members of Toastmasters judged each speech and determined the winners. From what I understood, Lions Club is an international volunteer organization and therefore the topic of the speeches was to explain the changes that could be made in their community through volunteering.
There were six speakers, all in high school, and every one of them was an excellent speaker. I was impressed at their composure and ability to deliver organized and meaningful speeches without many flaws. It was great to have people in my age group there as well for a nice change because almost all of the members of the Ranch Raconteurs are much older than me. This experience also helped me greatly to become a better evaluator, because I had to manually score each speaker on a rubric and then use those to determine a top three.
After the Lions Club portion of the meeting, one speaker was scheduled to give a speech and be evaluated in the normal fashion. I was relieved that there was no time for Table Topics because of the contest. The impromptu speaking is my biggest fear so far because I'm scared that I will get a question that I don't know how to answer and will embarrass myself in front of the group. I usually need time to think a question through after it is asked and I tend to freeze up when I am put on the spot. Hopefully I will conquer this through persistence and I will continue to go to the club and participate every week despite my fear.
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