Life In A Bag Reflection

I had a speech to give this last Monday, and it really shocked me with how it made me feel. The first three weeks before the speech, I was calm and ready. I thought that since graduating high school I was no longer the shy kid who dreaded giving speeches, it was college by the way! The nights leading up to the speech were a completely different story. I could not get the speech out of my mind, and I was worrying about it constantly. Walking into the classroom only worsened my feelings of worry, as I began to see how many seats there were. As it slowly became my turn to talk, I felt sick to my stomach at the thought of giving my speech. While giving it, I was calm for certain parts but towards the end I started to falter. I panicked about not knowing how to close my speech, and rambled about random things for a while. I felt as though I was talking in a good manner, but the evaluation given to me told me that I needed more pronunciation and diction. After the speech, I read through the evaluation a few times and realized that what was said was true. I did need to work on carrying my voice better, and emphasizing key points. As my next speech approaches I am working on it more, and trying to calm my fears of public speaking. I'm trying to practice more, and be better with my voice. When preparing this speech I practiced it with others a few times, but they were always too short even though I stopped to think of what to say numerous times. For this speech I did not cite any sources, as it was one about my life. I think that with the next speech I could speak louder, and gesture differently. I tend to fall into a rut when speaking, and I do the same thing over and over (with my gestures and voice). Hopefully I am able to improve over my last speech with the next one, as I am trying harder to get better with what has been said about my previous speech.