Looking back on my lone wolf speech now that the final version has been presented to the class, I can say that it definitely went better than I expected. Going first, although stress inducing, ended up being a huge weight off of my shoulders and helped me to enjoy the rest of the speeches that were delivered that day. I really enjoyed seeing all of the different directions that everyone took with their speeches, and what visual aids they decided to use.
Throughout this project, I found the drafting and practicing process to be very helpful in making my speech well organized and packed with useful information that I wanted to convey. One thing that I think could’ve gone better was the peer review process. Although I was able to get some helpful feedback from my peers throughout the two days of peer review, there definitely wasn’t as much communication as there should have been in my opinion. This is not surprising to me however, since it was the first time that this class had done peer review all together. In addition, with the nature of the project itself being a solo speech I think most of us dedicated our attention to getting through peer review as opposed to what we could get out of it. Despite this, I was pleasantly surprised by the amount that I was able to revise and improve my speech from beginning to end. At first I wasn’t sure what I would change or how I could make it fit the time requirements, but after a lot of practice and presenting in front of a handful of different people I was able to pick up some useful feedback to improve my speech overall.
(copied from journal 10)