Journal #7: Self-Evaluation

    To put it lightly, my speech was a catastrophe.

    I joined a Zoom call with some classmates as discussed in the audience-gathering discussion post, and we knocked out our speeches one by one. During my first attempt, I was about partway through until I realized I had forgot to hit screen record on my phone. Embarrassing, and it definitely made me feel a little extra anxiety, but I took a few breaths (and held my dog in my lap for a while) and I was prepared for my second attempt. I believe it went well, if not for a few hiccups and awkward pauses where I forgot what my next talking point was.

    Flash forward to 10/1, the day in which I am writing this, and I realized I made another error: I recorded the speech, but I hit the "record media" button rather than "record microphone", meaning that you cannot hear me in that recording and I thus have to do it again. I will get it done, even though it will be last minute, but in terms of preparedness and how I feel about giving my speech, I must say that I am not feeling confident in my abilities at the moment.

    More so, I'm just frustrated. I already messed up once, but twice? And to fumble so badly that I need to redo my speech a 3rd time? That much is enough to make me feel as though my speech has failed before it has even been submitted. As much as blaming myself would probably add to the current worthlessness I am feeling, I do think this is an important step in understanding how to present my speech and how unprecedented occurrences such as technological errors can impact my speech and communication anxiety.

    Had I given myself more time to work out the kinks of screen recording and understanding what could go wrong in recording my presentation, I would not have had the issue I am having. Furthermore, I learned that panicking after realizing I made a mistake is not beneficial in surpassing my communication anxiety. As much as I'm eager to beat myself up over and dwell on the fact that I made a mistake, the fact that I made that mistake is proof enough that I was too focused on being done with my presentation rather than ensuring it was as clear and effective as possible.

    It might feel like cheating the system to turn in a self-evaluation before submitting the speech that will be graded, but I feel as if this experience is enough of an example to go off of in terms of how I feel my speech went. I am not expecting any major hiccups tomorrow, but in the event that I do make another big mistake, I will edit this blog post and reference that.