I'll Try Anything Once: Speaking at Toastmasters

Prior Lake American

To paraphrase former United States President Theodore Roosevelt, speak slowly and stop messing with your hair.

I was dared in early April to give a speech to a local chapter of Toastmasters International, the Minnesota River Valley Toastmasters Club. President Maureen Carlson emailed and challenged me to prepare and give a speech on a topic of my choice during the club's open house on April 30.

She also wrote that the club was trying to find a local celebrity speaker. I thought, "Oh, cool, can't wait to meet a local celebrity," but turns out that she was referring to me.

Toastmasters is an international organization with chapters across the world. The goal of the club is to help members feel more confident in their public speaking and leadership skills.

Chapters hold weekly meetings (for the Minnesota River Valley Toastmasters, it's every Monday) for an hour where there are generally two prepared speeches scheduled as well as an off-the-cuff section where someone will ask short questions such as "What was a news article you read lately that impacted you and why?" and members are not given time to prepare, but must give one- to two-minute speeches regarding the topic.

Those who prepare speeches try to correspond to particular speech and leadership skills found in the Toastmasters manual and are then critiqued by the group as a whole and then by a speech evaluator.

Carlson told me that the speech evaluator was optional since I was a guest, but I opted in to get the full Toastmasters experience. I would be a master of toasts. Carlson also suggested a number of speech topics, mostly about being a community reporter.

I mulled it over for a few weeks. Carlson called me on the morning of the open house and asked if I had a speech title. "Well, uh, I'm planning to write it now but 'media literacy,'" I said.

Like any paper I had written in college, I had a topic but waited until the last possible minute to write it. To be fair, my entire job is pretty much writing articles on deadline.

Carlson hung up, likely a bit apprehensive. I opened up a Google Doc and hoped she wasn't thinking of other local celebrities she should have invited instead. I put down bullet points for where I wanted this speech to go and opened up tabs of articles and research I had mentally stored away.

And I wrote.

I wrote about the United States and where the country is at with freedom of the press. I wrote about how "fake news" and physical violence against reporters has affected me and colleagues I know personally. I wrote about the responsibility of consumers to make sure what they're reading is real. I wrote about the bias myth and gave resources to see the news from other points of views ("Blue Feed, Red Feed" by the Wall Street Journal and allsides.com, in case anyone is interested). I wrote about local news and how local reporters care about the communities they cover. I wrote about the importance of journalism, especially in modern society.

And like I was some heroine in a movie about my journalism career (in which I eventually win a Pulitzer Prize) the members of the club clapped.

Of course, one of the unofficial rules of the club is that they clap when people go up to speak and when they're done no matter what, but still.

At the end of the meeting, I received written evaluation cards from open house attendees as well as an in-person critique from speech evaluator Mary Swanson. Here are some highlights from the written cards:

• "Really nice volume. Easy voice to listen to."

• "A+"

• "Maybe a little more conversational tone"

• "Media literacy relies on consumer — strong point"

• "Provided support to key points. Added credibility to message."

• Some of the consistent constructive criticism I received was that I talked a bit fast (I had written "speak slow" on my palm beforehand but apparently ignored that) and that I should put my hair back to avoid flipping my bangs off of my forehead like an agitated pony.

I didn't notice it at the time, but after I read the comments I couldn't stop noticing that I flip my hair approximately every 3.5 seconds. I might do it in my sleep, even. I have no way of knowing.

Of course, they were too nice to call me an agitated pony so that metaphor is my own. Most of the critiques were generally positive, which would be attributed to my incredible speech-making skill or another Toastmasters philosophy to praise initially on making the speech at all and praise later on for skill.

Would I do it again?

Yes, I will need to make a speech when I earn a Pulitzer Prize and then many speeches later on when I become the President of the United States of America. Only joking about the second part, being the president sounds terrible.

I also would make a speech at a Toastmasters Club again. Though I write every day, Toastmasters would provide a sort of outlet in that I could talk or write about whatever I wanted.

Toastmasters would also be a great resource if you moved to a new city and were trying to make some connections as it allows you to open up and communicate with strangers. And sometimes, strangers can give you a confidence boost that people you know cannot.

And they can provide a better audience than a shower wall, for instance.

Tune in next time to see what I'll try at least once and in the meantime, tell me what to try.