July 10, 2003
Fooled 'Em Gifted Style
Every instinct would tell me that eight hours of speech class would be torturous. Painful. Not unlike PMS cramps while listening to Avril Lavigne. Utterly excruciating.
But it was not at all!!
Demonstration speeches were genuinely interesting. There was eating, which is always good, and I learned how to hemp! Hemp probably should not be used as a verb, but oh well. It does not diminish my excitement at learning something I have been aching to learn how to do but not so much that I actually learned how to do it on my own. The nice thing about learning how to do something with a group is you can be a little slow at it without it being noticeable, while during a one-on-one tutorial an instructor can easily yell "How can you not get it? It's soo easy!"
My origami balloons were a big hit too. I told one of the girls in my class that I was doing it before hand and I guess she was excited about it because she told all of her friends so people were actually looking forward to my speech. Who would think? It is always nice to give a speech with people genuinely enthused about it and oooing and ahhing and saying things like "This is cool!"
What is even better is they seemed sincere. It has been pointed out to me that I am always trying to figure out how people really feel when often enough it does not matter except for the fact that I agonize over it and make myself more miserable. So seeming like it will be good enough for me.
Then my persuasive speech was a big success, especially the simulation I was planning. My speech was about how important gifted education at an early age is and to simulate how a gifted child feels in a normal classroom I had my teacher give the class give a partner quiz that was extremely repetitive.
In order to make the quiz convincing, I timed it for right after a break and wrote a script for my teacher. When we got back from our break she came in and said something aobut all of us having poor, too relaxed attitudes about our speeches. She was sick of our talking, etc, so she was giving us a quiz. People got extremely angry and frustrated, just like I wanted. One girl exclaimed "bitch!" about my teacher.
Then in the middle of my speech I started discussing how the gifted students suffer in the average classroom. "Usually the work is very repetitive, much like the quiz I just gave you guys." The look on everyone's faces was fantastic, maintaining eye contact was no problem because I would not have missed the reaction for anything in the world.
Not only did I catch people's attention to really drive my point home, I think there was some appreciation for my creativity and the act in general. It was executed so well, there were several times I was afraid it would seem weird, but people thought it was legitimate and I had people going.
The only bad side effect is it makes me feel far more powerful than I actually am for the moment.
So to dull my ego I should go figure out what speech I am going to give tomorrow...for my last day! Ooo the excitement.
Love,
Mandy