Post #1 Branisha Surrall

 When our professor first told us we had to do a three minute speech, I honestly thought it was going to be easy. In my head, three minutes sounded like nothing. I figured I would just log on, say a few quick things about my topic, and mute myself before I even had time to get nervous. But I was so wrong. Trying to fit an entire chapter into a strict three minute window is honestly way harder than giving a longer presentation where you can just ramble on. You have zero room to waste time. Every second moves fast, and before you even realize what is happening, the timer is already running out.

Logging into our Zoom class on presentation day, was  awkward as it was my first time speaking on zoom to my classmates. The few people with cameras on are just staring blankly at their screens and the others you have no idea what’s happening. Nobody wanted to go first, but we all kind of just wanted to get it over with so we could stop stressing. My topic was on using language effectively, which was all about how our word choices shape whether people trust us, the difference between powerful and powerless language, and why overused clichés hurt your message.

When it was my turn to go I didn’t this I would be nervous but, my heart was definitely beating fast. When I was first working on my slides at home, I made the mistake of putting way too much text on them. I was scared I was going to forget what to say, so I basically wrote out whole thoughts on the screen. But while I was practicing, I realized that on a laptop screen, huge walls of text look even worse. If people were already distracted by other tabs, putting up an essay would guarantee they would tune me out completely.

So I cut a lot of it out and kept it simple. I focused on one main idea, which is that persuading people is not just about dumping facts and information on them. It is about picking the right words so they actually believe you. I talked about how easy it is to ruin your own credibility without even noticing. People do it all the time by using disclaimers like saying I am no expert but, or saying I could be wrong about this. We usually say stuff like that when we are nervous because we want to lower expectations, but all it really does is tell whoever is listening that they probably should not take us seriously.

I also talked about clichés, like telling people to think outside the box or saying at the end of the day. We hear those phrases so often in everyday life that they barely mean anything anymore. Plus, if someone in the audience is not familiar with that specific idiom, they might get confused and completely miss the point of your message.

Presenting to a wall of black Zoom boxes is weird because you get zero live feedback, so I had to force myself to look straight into my webcam and use my own advice. Instead of starting with an apology or sounding unsure through my mic, I took a breath and just spoke with conviction or so I thought . The three minutes went by so fast it felt like thirty seconds. When I finished my closing sentence and saw the timer hit zero, I felt this huge wave of relief. I hit stop share, muted my mic, and was just glad I got my main points across without hiding behind tiny text which I do prefer.