Writing my TED talk
Today in class, everybody got a chance to practice his or her monologue in front of a group of four people. I am incredibly grateful for that opportunity.
I discovered (via Nick and Audrey's careful notetaking) that I had 19 distinct verbal tics in the space of five minutes. In addition, Nick informed me that I had a strange tendency to step back and forth while speaking. I didn't even finish on time; I was 10 seconds over time. Damn.
Everybody in my group also informed me that my speech was far too technical. I thought I'd given a relatively balanced speech, but in fact had gone over everybody's heads. I suppose it's like talking speed: when you think you're speaking slowly, slow down even more.
My 3x5 notecards became irrelevant halfway through; I stopped referring to them as I realized that they were less and less on topic. So I probably need to revise those.
As for actual speech practice: perhaps I should find a willing audience that will critique me as well as my classmates did.
Well, what else is new? I am looking into a new blog theme:
It is based on the default theme for the Ghost blogging platform, and adapted to the Jekyll static site generator that I use. I have customized it for my needs.
I love how the text is more readable and probably also less technical looking. Here is an example of a blog post:
It's gorgeous. Maybe this site will look different next time!