Put Up or Shut Up

Okay. I wanted to post earlier, but I haven't had the time. It turns out that it's really hard to spend any time on a computer when you live in West Haven; the busses only make the rounds 10 times a day (5 times north and 5 times south).

Over the summer, I plugged along, doing speech class. As predicted, speech is the almighty bitch, but for me, i had a new challenge -- having no computer made data gathering harder. I believe I wrote about how I got through the persuasive speech, but the persuasive speech was another story.

In that speech, I was persuading everyone on why social security privatization was a bad thing. Now, it wasn't hard in the thinking sense, it was just hard in the busy work sense. I had a lot of my materials ready by the eve of the speech day (I was set to be one of the first speeches), but I got tired and decided to sleep first (I know I work faster if I'm not tired. I had, after all, spent 2 hours bicycling and 10 hours working at the hospital, plus time to make food...). Well, I woke up at 2, in my frigid-ass unibomber shack (August was cold!), and began to work. And I worked. And I worked. I wanted this stuff memorized. I took one break, when I made breakfast at 6:30 and got ready for the bus at 7, but even then, I worked. At 9:30, I finished the outline, and tried to get my powerpoint fixed up. But! I couldn't. I couldn't get my pictures on to powerpoint, and didn't have time to figure it out. After losing 15 minutes, I decided to use my old powerpoint presentation for my informative speech, which luckily had some pictures I didn't use, and then tried to save it to disc.

The computer ate my floppy.

Frustrated, I threw my hands in the air, and ran to the student store, bought a floppy, and came back. I stuck it in a different computer, pulled my informative speech powerpoint off my email, refinished it for the persuasive speech, saved to the floppy, and back to my email. (Putting powerpoint in email is really nice!) By this time it was 10:00, which is when the class started. I furiously began writing my cards. In my head while I did this, I started getting thoughts: I was on the last part of the last speech in a class that I had completed almost completely. I was a centimeter from victory. I was also a centimeter from failure. If I didn't get to class on time, I was doomed. All would be for naught. I would have to redo everything I did.

It was judgment time.

As I scribbled the information on the flashcards, I saw the time: 10:35. There weren't very many people going to present on the first day of persuasive speeches. Would I make it? Would class be over when I got there? As time when on, I got this overwhelming feeling of my heart sinking, and I felt depressed and frazzled. I felt like I had already lost; That it was hopeless. I wanted to stop.

But I didn't. I knew that I was so very close, that it was time to put up. I wrote that last damn flashcard, picked up everything, and charged to my speech class.

They were almost done.

Everyone was surprised to see me. The teacher thought she saw the telltale sign of someone who hadn't completed their speech, and decided not to show up on their speech day at all. She thought wrong!

I gave that speech in front of everybody, whilst using my flashcards minimally (my way of doing things). After the speech, so many people were engaged by my presentation, that we spent a good half hour talking afterwords about all kinds of parts of social security that weren't about persuasion.

I got an A in that class.

So, now it's over. The one class that's about something I do almost everyday (give speeches), that kicked my ass the first time around (and hurt my self esteem. That was a terrible teacher, whom I heard had a mental breakdown later. But anyway)I was victorious in everything I cared about at that time.

Anyway, A lot happened these past four weeks (it's the second week of school). But I have to catch the last bus to West Haven, so I'll write more later.